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Pr^ice 2i> Cents. 



Career and Conversation 



of 



John Swinton 








By ROBERT WATERS 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY, Publishers, 56 FIFTH AVENUE, CHICAGO. 



/ 



/ 



CAREER AND CONVERSATION 



OF 



JOHN SWINTON 



JOURNALIST, ORATOR, ECONOMIST 



BY ^ 

ROBERT WATERS 

Author of "Intellectual Pursuits," "Life of William 
CoBBETT," "John Selden and His Table Talk," Etc. 



* ' To those who knew thee not, no words can paint; 
And those who knew thee, know all words arefaint.^^ 

Hannah Mors. 



CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
56 Fifth Avenue 



THE l.lBRAffY OF 




COWnRESfi, 




T\^^ C0WE8 RtcKurrai 


, 


OCT, 2^' 1902 


'.' 


OorrvfllflMT 1KT»?V 


^ 


CLASS <^0(Xa Mo. 






* V 






BT OHAJLCns H. XUR & OOMFAmt- 



11^ 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter PAes 

I. How THIS Sketch Came to be Wbitten - - - i 

II. First Acquaintance with Swinton - • . g 

III. SUMMABY OF SwINTON'B CABBSR BEFORE BBCOMINe 

AN EdITOB 12 

IV. SwiNTON'B Talk 1« 

V. How SwiNTON Became a Newspaper Writer - 25 

VI. SwiNTON's Description op James Gordon Ben- 
nett AND Horace Greeley— How he Became 
A Socialist — His Relations with Charles A. 

Dana 29 

VII. Unjust Judges and Capitalists - - - - 38 

VIII. An Extraordinary Feat — An Example op What 

A Man May Do Under Pressure - - - 43 

IX. SwiNTON AND InGERSOLL— SwiNTON AS AN ORATOR - 46 

X. John Swinton's Paper 52 

XI. One op Swinton's Last Utterances— How he 

Supported the Labor Unions • - - - 57 

XII. Reformers, Patriots and Philanthropists - 64 

XIII. Swinton's Latter Years — Last Interviews with 

him 69 

On the Way to Nazareth — A Legend - - 71 

Charles F. Wingate's Tribute - - - - 80 

Otis H. Wilmarth's Poem 84 



p- 



CAREER AND CONVERSATION 

OF 

JOHN SWINTON 



CHAPTER I. 

HOW THIS SKETCH CAME TO BE WRITTEN. 

"Why don't you try and give some account of the life 
of this remarkable man, John Swinton?" said a well- 
known publisher to the writer. 

"I ? I am not a newspaper writer.'' 

"No, but you can do that quite as well as a newspaper 
writer. Why should your account be in the shape of a 
newspaper article? It might be a magazine article, or a 
short pamphlet — something one can read in an hour." 

"Oh, I have too much to do in my own line just now — 
I have no time for such a thing." 

"Well, if you don't, nobody else will." 

"Why so ? It might prove a remunerative piece of work, 
and probably one of his own confreres on the press will do 
it — and do it better than I can." 

"I don't know about that. I don't think so; and, be- 
sides, there is too much jealousy among the men of the 
press. They can write better about anybody else than 
about one of their own craft. No man, you know, is a 
prophet in his own household. Now, you knew him bet- 
ter than any journalist now alive, and might give an 
account of him that would show the man as he was." 

"That is very doubtful. But if I thought it would do 
any good — " 

5 



6 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

"Do any good? Why, it will do lots of good. Every 
young journalist (and journalists are now legion), and 
every young man with a spark of inti&lleetual life in him, 
will read it with avidity. No man ever knew him without 
being the better for it; and no man will read his history 
without being the wiser for it. 'The proper study of man- 
kind is man,^ you know. To many, that history will prove 
a revelation; to others, a warning; to others, an inspira- 
tion." 

"You almost make me feel like trying it. I know that 
his life has been all three to me. But I feel that an abler 
pen than mine ought to do this work." 

'Relieve me, you could not employ your pen to better 
advantage. The memory of great editors, like that of 
great actors, dies with them. Their writings are read by 
the people of their day and generation, on whom they 
have an effect, and that is the end of them. So that if 
one who knew their spirit, their daily walk, their con- 
versation, does not describe it, it will never be known. 
Who knows much of the inner life of the elder Ben- 
nett, of Henry J. Raymond, of Dr. Moseley, who wrote 
for the London Times for a generation, of Dr. Black, 
who edited the Morning Post for forty years, or of any of 
the leading editors of ten years ago? Little remains of 
these men but their names. Carlyle says that the future 
historian will have little to say of kings, camps, and courts, 
but much of this or that able editor, who moulded public 
opinion and changed votes. These are the men we ought 
to know something of; and these are the men to whom 
Henry Taylor referred when he said, *The world knows 
nothing of its greatest men.' " 

"But I could only speak of our friend as I knew him 
in my own personal relations with him. I know little of 



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HOW THIS SKETCH CAME TO BE WRITTEN 7 

his relations with the great editors and the public men 
with whom he had to do." 

''That doesn't matter — it may be all the better for that. 
Every man shows his true character to some persons^ — 
much better to an intimate friend and in familiar con- 
versation than in official or business relations. One gets 
nearer the man in this way." 

"Well, as you think it worth while, I shall try what I 
can do. I shall simply tell what I have seen and known 
of him as I knew him. If I fail, the responsibility will 
be yours — I shall lay all the blame, mind, on your shoul- 
ders." 

''AH right, old boy; go ahead. I am ready to bear the 
consequences." 

Such was the colloquy that took place between myself 
and a gentleman for whose judgment I have much re- 
spect. So the reader will see how this story came into 
being; and when he has perused it I hope he will not 
consider my effort unprofitable or my friend's judgment 
unsound. 



^ 



CHAPTEEIL 

riEST ACQUAINTANCE WITH SWINTON. 

I made the acquaintance of John Swinton in my youth, 
when we worked together as compositors, and, saw each 
other daily for years. Though this is more than forty 
years ago, I remember our meetings very distinctly, and 
especially the occasion on which I first made his 
acquaintance. He had his "stand" in the printing 
office with me; and, having occasion to get some type 
from a "case" close to his, I asked him some questions 
about it, which he answered so readily and cheerfully 
that T immediately took a liking to him; and so our 
acquaintance ripened into friendship. A friend of his 
told me that he had made Swinton's acquaintance by a 
fellow- workman coming to him one day and exclaiming: 
"Come, see a man who will do anything for you — ^the 
kindest, cleverest man I ever met." 

Swinton's talk stirred me more than that of any man 
I had so far known. He was full of enthusiasm for 
noble pursuits and noble men; and, being familiar with 
good books, an ardent admirer of Carlyle, Emerson, 
Montaigne and Ruskin, I learned much from him. I 
think it was from him that I first heard of these renowned 
writers, whose writings were of a finer sort than I had 
been accustomed to. "Plutarch's Lives" was another of 
his books, and many a talk had we about the heroes of 
that famous work. Enthusiastic, aspiring, noble-minded, 
he presented a strong contrast to most of the "tj^pos" 
by whom he was surrounded, very few of whom had any 

8 



FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH SWINTON f 

sympathy with the aima and ideas which animated him. 
I was drawn to him by similarity of feeling, and prob- 
ably because he was a native of my own country, full of 
Scottish lore, poetry and tradition, and willing to talk 
of all these things. Every young man should know that 
conversation with men of knowledge and ability is the 
best education, the surest inspiration to noble thinking 
and worthy living. 

I remember especially some amusing stories he told m« 
of old George Buchanan — stories probably not set down 
in the books, but more striking and characteristic of that 
sixteenth-century scholar, courtier, castle-stormer and poet 
than any of those that are. Swinton was naturally 
fond of the grotesque and the extravagant; for after his 
return from Europe in 1890 he related some stories of 
Edinburgh characters of the present day that are just 
as extraordinary as those he had told me of Buchanan 
in the early fifties. 

I was between fifteen and sixteen years of age at thi^ 
time, and Swinton was a few years older. He had en- 
joyed a better training than I had, so I naturally looked 
up to him as a person of superior ability. Both of his 
brothers had received a classical education, and how it 
came to pass that he had not then been similarly favored 
I cannot say. Nor do I know how he came to follow 
the trade of a printer, in which he was uncommonly 
swift and skillful. In fact, he was markedly different 
from the printers who surrounded him, many of whom 
looked upon him as something of a wag, and aften 
made game of his opinions. He was in full sympathy 
with the anti-slavery movement of that time, while most 
of his comrades sneered at the negro and made vulgar 
jokes about the negress. The reader may imagine, there- 



10 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

fore, what kind of discussion was frequently held be- 
tween them. Of course, I was entirely on his side in 
these discussions, and used to listen to his talk with a 
wondering admiration that I can hardly describe. There 
was a fascination in his manner which attracted me like 
a spell; the very burr of his speech, when he got ex- 
cited, was music to my ear, and I was proud of him as 
one who stood on a higher plane than most of his fellows. 
I was in the habit of telling him what books I had read 
and of discussing their merits and demerits. When I 
complained of the obscurities of Emerson, whose "Repre- 
sentative Men" I had endeavored to read, he would take 
pains to explain him to me; and this gave occasion for 
much talk about litej^ture and authorship. Carlyle was 
his especial favorite at this time, and he would pull 
"Sai-tor Eesartus'^ out of his pocket and read the book 
aloud to me. Then he would talk of Carlyle and tell 
what wonderful books he had written. I think that Car- 
lyle had more to do in moulding the mind of Swinton 
than any other writer. He drew my attention to his 
"Life of John Sterling," which was the first book of 
Carlyle's I read with understanding and appreciation; 
for Carlyle had so far been to me a sort of Delphic 
oracle, full of all sorts of hidden meanings. So this 
book gave occasion for much talk about him and his con- 
temporaries. My favorite author at this time was Wil- 
liam Cobbett, whose strong sense and plain language 
needed no explanation, and I drank deeply of the intel- 
lectual wine offered by him. But Swinton did not think 
much of Cobbett at that time; he entertained notions 
about him which he subsequently changed. Little did 
he then imagine that he would himself become a re- 
former strongly resembling Cobbett in style and char- 



FIEST ACQUAINTANCE WITH SWINTON 11 

acter, and advocate precisely such measures as Cobbett 
had advocated. 

Above the middle height, long-haired, broad-browed, 
with a dark, keen, piercing eye, full of enthusiasm for 
freedom of thought and speech, vehement in his denun- 
ciation of slavery, and fearless in his exposition of dar- 
ing views and noble aspirations, Swinton was in those 
years the very image of the enthusiastic social reformer, 
such as I imagine Southey and Coleridge were when 
they were meditating their pantisocracy in America. A 
zealous disciple of the abolitionists, Phillips, Parker, 
and Garrison, a constant attendant on Beecher's ser- 
mons, a great reader of anti-slavery papers and maga- 
zines, he was even then noted among his acquaintances 
for the impetuous ardor with which he assailed slavery, 
Bonapartism, Mormonism and every form of spiritual, 
social or political oppression. Besides all this, he had 
much to say of John Knox, of Ossian, of Rob Roy, of 
Paul Jones and of various other Scottish heroes. In 
fact, like all noble-minded men, he was emphatically a 
hero- worshiper. Carlyle was right when he said: "IS"© 
sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness 
than disbelief in great men." But before giving Mr. 
Swinton's conversation let me recount something of his 
career. 



CHAPTER III. 

eUMMART OF SWINTON's CAREER BEFORE BECOMING AN 

EDITOR. 

Bom in Salton, Haddingtonshire, Scotland, in 1830, 
John Swinton was brought to America by way of Mon- 
treal in his thirteenth year. Here (in the Montreal 
Witness) the boy learned the art of typesetting, by 
which, within a few years, he earned his living in many 
American cities, from Keokuk (at which town he started 
a little paper) to New Orleans and New York. Where 
I made his acquaintance was at Thomas B. Smith's 
printing office, William street, a site near the Brooklyn 
Bridge, where now stands a fifteen-story sky-scraper. 
I remember his telling me that he once went with Mrs. 
.Swinton, some thirty years afterward, to look at this 
old building, in which he spent several hard years of his 
early manhood. 

One morning I was surprised to learn that he had left 
New York for Greensboro, North Carolina, where his 
brother William (since famous for his school-books) was 
employed as a teacher of languages. The two brothers 
intended to start in this town a magazine or literary 
journal of a liberal sort, of which they were to be joint 
editors. A queer place to start that kind of a magazine 
in! I remember the Carlylean style of the prospectus, 
which was to elevate and illuminate mankind, and do 
great things in the line of reform. But the plan came to 
naught. I do not think that the first number, or more 
than the first, ever appeared. Probably the brothers 

12 



swinton's career before becoming an editor 13 

came to see that in that stifling slave^holding atmosphere 
no independent organ of thought could live, and so 
gave it up in despair. 

During this period I kept up a correspondence with 
Swinton, whom I greatly missed; but his letters were 
a stimulus to exertion. I had, in those days, many a 
battle with my fellow-workmen, especially about slavery 
and the comparative merits of various forms of gover- 
ment, and I used to give an account of all this to Swin- 
ton, who, of course, encouraged me to proceed in the 
contest. 

This was about the time when the Irishman John 
Mitchel arrived in America and established a paper, 
The Citizen, in which he expressed a wish for "a 
plantation in Alabama, well stocked with fat niggers." 
This created an immense sensation in the whole coun- 
try, and the discussions among the printers at Smith's 
concerning him and his "niggers" were red-hot. Beech- 
er's splendid reply in one of his '^Star Papers" and 
Mitchel's vituperative attacks on the famous preacher 
became the talk of the town; and we printers, like other 
people, were ranged in two camps, one of them (liberal) 
for the preacher, the other (pro-slavery) for the "pa- 
triot." Swinton must have been getting his education 
in political discussion in these years. 
• He subsequently went to South Carolina, where he 
was employed as a compositor in the State printing 
office at the Capitol, and although an out-and-out Abo- 
litionist, he managed to get along there somehow, per- 
haps by guarding both his tongue and his conduct^ 
though I have heard he risked his life by teaching 
negroes to read, under peculiar circumstances, in an under- 
ground vault. It was here that he made a practical 



14 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

acquaintance witk slavery, which he subsequently turned 
to good account. One night a dispatch came announcing 
the outbreak of hostilities in Kansas and John Brown -s. 
attack on the Border Ruffians. Swinton, stirred as if by 
a trumpet-call, set off for Kansas the very next morn- 
ing, without stopping even to draw his salary, and, after 
a long ride to St. Louis and a long sail up the Missouri, 
reached the Great Plains just in time to hear of 
Brown's victories over the enemies of freedom. He 
always regretted he had not had a hand in this cam- 
paign, for he considered it a glorious one, and also 
because the after-comers were never regarded with the 
respect accorded to those who were on the spot. He 
became an employee of the Lawrence RepuMican as 
its manager, and here he remained until the troubles 
were over and Kansas was admitted into the Union as a 
Free State. 

On returning to New York he began the study of medi- 
cine in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, dili- 
gently attending the lectures of the professors and mak- 
ing an especial study of anatomy and physiolog} . His 
talk at this time was all about medicine and surgery, 
which he lauded as the greatest thing in the world. The 
improvements in surgery and the wonderful things done 
by surgeons filled his mind. He once took me into the 
college dissecting-room and was greatly amused at my 
horror of the spectacle there presented. I had never 
been in a dissecting-room before, and the sight of half 
a dozen "subjects" in various stages of dissection, to- 
gether with the sickening smell and ghastly sights, filled 
me with horror and distress. The memories of that 
place remained with me for months afterward. Then 
we went to Pfaff's restaurant, in Broadway, where ft 



swinton's career before becoming an editor 15 

number of Bohemians, all friends of his, used to con- 
gregate. Among these were Walt Whitman, Albert 
Brisbane, William Swinton, Fitzjames O'Brien and Count 
Gurowski. To the latter Swinton seems to have acted 
as assistant in his compositions for the press, and 
this occupation probably led him to think of writing 
himself. I remember his telling me of the rage of this 
irascible and pugnacious Russian nobleman on finding 
that the editor of the Tribune had made changes in 
his contributions to that paper. "Damn him!" ex- 
claimed the Count, "I taught Nicholas to rule; Mazzini 
to conspire!" I think Swinton rewrote the whole of 
Gurowski's book on Russia. Gurowski was one of the 
fiercest and ugliest Russians that ever lived, and I won- 
der how Swinton got along with him. 

It was at this time, while studying medicine in New- 
York, that Swinton began to write for the New York 
Times. His first articles treated of medicine, disease 
and crime; he pointed them out to me with pride, but 
he was almost as volcanic as Gurowski ,when I hinted 
at any erroneous expression in one of his articles. 



CHAPTER IV. 
swinton's talk. 

In 1861 I left for Europe, and did not isee Swinton 
again for seven years. After passing eighteen months in 
England, an equal period in France, and four years 
in Germany, I came hack and found Swinton one of 
the leader-writers of the Times and well known in 
the literary and political world. He had heen manag- 
ing editor of that paper during the Civil War; had 
undergone a tremendous strain during that period, and 
his whole appearance was now greatly changed: his hair 
had turned white and his face had lost all the youthful 
freshness of former years. I was struck with aston- 
ishment at the changa But he had gone through an 
ordeal of which I had at that time no conception. Even 
in ordinary times the position of managing editor of 
a great daily paper, and "leader- writer*^ as well, in- 
volves labor and responsibility so heavy that few men 
can stand it for many years. Imagine what that posi- 
tion must have been during the Civil War! Swinton 
had suddenly, in outward appearance at least, grown 
old. 

Yet, though his hair was white and his general ap- 
pearance altered, he was very gay and lively in spirit, 
and there was something of the dandy in his make-up, 
for he wore a frilled shirt, a kind of velvet jacket and a 
broad cravat; and he had something novel in his manner 
that struck me as peculiar. He was well oif at this time, 
and could indulge his fancies. His talk, too, was now of 

16 



swinton's talk 17 

public affairs, in which he himself had borne a part, 
and he seemed more American in thought and feeling 
than any American I had ever known. I had during my 
residence abroad acquired great respect for the office- 
holders and public men in Europe, and when I compared 
them with the corrupt Tweed gang, then in power, the 
comparison was by no means favorable to the latter. 
Swinton, however, would not admit that any officials in 
Europe were better than those in America, and rated 
me soundly for my European proclivities. I remember 
our talk on this subject was by no means pleasant; he 
was angry with me for my admiration of British states- 
men and German officials, and at one time I was afraid 
that our differences would bring our friendship to an 
end. "You once declared to me," I reminded him, 
"that the one man you could not abide was the man 
who agreed to everything you said. Now, how can you 
get angry with me for differing with you on matters of 
opinion?" This seemed to calm him, and we separated 
without wrath. 

I was reminded of this lately, when I found that Swin- 
ton, after his recent prolonged tour abroad, expressed 
greater esteem for the men and methods he found in 
Britain, especially in political and judicial circles, than 
I had ever expressed to him. He found, for instance, 
that there had not been for centuries in Edinburgh a 
single case of malfeasance in office, such as we see almost 
every day in 'New York. But I shall say no more 
of this just now. I may state, however, that Swinton 
had an imperious temper. Careful and punctilious him- 
self, he instantly resisted the least breach of civility. 
On one occasion, at the Twilight Club, when his turn 
came to speak, and the chairman gave his place to a 



18 CAEEEE AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

member who declared he had to leave by an early train, 
Swinton rose and left the club-room in high dudgeon. 
"The gentleman should not speak at all," said he, "or 
wait till his turn came." 

During the years I passed in Europe I had seen a 
good deal of life. in London, Paris, Munich and Frank- 
fort. Haying become a teacher I had found time for 
study, and had not only read many English, French 
and German books, but had made the acquaintance of 
some men of ability, and learned some things with which 
Swinton was not familiar. But in conversation he out- 
talked me beyond all measure, and on public affairs he 
spoke as "one having authority." He had an assurance 
and energy that were not to be withstood, and I felt 
that I was a mere child in his hands. He had acquired 
such a command of language, such a wealth of imagery, 
and such knowledge of men and things, present and 
past, literary, political and scientific, that I thought him 
by far the best-informed man and the most brilliant 
talker I had ever known. 

Having mingled on familiar terms with great men, 
"men of action and men of thought," and having him- 
self played no small part in the memorable war-drama 
which had just closed^ he had acquired an authority 
and a prestige that threw me quite into the shade. For 
he had made the personal acquaintance of the leading 
editors, statesmen and generals of the war times; had 
taken their measure and passed judgment on their ac- 
tions; had applauded or condemned them as he thought 
fit; and all this gave him an assurance and an authority 
which were quite new to me. He was no longer the 
quiet, retiring, modest scholar, but the bold thinker and 



swinton's talk 19 

actor; and it took me some time to realize this. While 
I Lad been studying languages and pedagogic systems 
abroad he had been studying events at home and help- 
ing to shape the course of a nation's history. He had, 
in fact, undergone as great a change intellectually as he 
had physically; he had passed from youth and imma- 
turity to manhood and independence, while I was still a 
raw and unpolished youth. 

So that^ when he discovered that the actors on the 
great stage of political and public life were by no 
means such heaven-bom personages as he had once 
imagined, he did not hesitate to exercise his judg- 
ment concerning them and their actions; and as he 
had done this vigorously and effectively, in a style 
such as few writers of the day could command, he 
had no hesitation in talking like a man who had done 
his part (as he undoubtedly had) in shaping the course 
of events and the destiny of his country. Grant, Mc- 
Clellan, Sheridan, Lincoln, Raymond, Greeley, Bennett 
and other famous names were much in his talk; and he 
told me things of the inside history of these men 
which were new to me and which indeed were known to 
few at that time. 

He was full of the "points" he had made in certain 
articles regarding public policies, political maneuver- 
ing, congressional bills, party appointments, big specu- 
lations, etc.; and he talked like a man to whom nothing 
was impossible. Great schemes involving millions he 
spoke of as every-day affairs, and of men who had 
gained or lost millions as familiar acquaintances. He 
sometimes poured out his ideas and experiences with 
such extraordinary fluency, and told such florid storie? 
concerning publicists and their projects or their eon- 



20 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

duct, that I used to listen to him with some degree of 
incredulity, wondering whether he was really serious in 
his assertions or simply chaffing me. 

There was, in fact, something of Colonel Sellers in 
his talk at this time. He loved to excite surprise by 
mystical or extraordinary language, and at times seemed 
to take a secret pleasure in befogging one about what 
he had done or what he intended to do. fiis talk was 
quite different from his writing. While he wrote the 
plainest common sense, he talked transcendentalism, 
supernaturalism and radicalism. With the advanced re- 
formers of his day he was well acquainted; with Sweden- 
borg and the mystics he had communed for years; with 
Walt Whitman and the war poets he had intimate per- 
sonal relations, and with the great authors of the times 
he had long been familiar. So that, what with the in- 
fluence exerted on him by these men, and his own pecu- 
liar tendencies, he sometimes talked in such a bizarre 
way that I felt, on leaving him, as if I had been 
witnessing a pyrotechnic exhibition, brilliant and 
bewildering, but by no means edifying. His talk was so 
extraordinary that I could no more repeat it and give the 
substance of it than I could repeat one of Rubinstein's 
performances. It was carried on, like the composer's 
playing, in a whirl of enthusiasm, and he seemed to go 
off in a kind of rhapsody, as if impelled by a power 
over which he had no control and lasted until the fit 
was over. 

N'evertheless, his discourse was often fine — a won- 
derful display of rapid thinking and brilliant speaking, 
so all engrossing that I seldom ventured to interrupt 
him. The only man I ever heard who could be com- 
pared to him in this respect was the late James Eed- 



swinton's talk 21 

path, who, in some of his talks at the Twilight Club, 
poured forth such a vehement flow of thought, and dis- 
played such a wealth and power of expression, that he 
fairly overwhelmed his hearers with his thoughts. Poor 
Redpath! He, too, was a friend of Swinton's, and like 
him, sacrificed his talents and his life on the altar of duty. 

Swinton once said to me that, in writing his editorials, 
he was often embarrassed by the fact that with every 
sentence he wrote quite a new line of thought in some 
other direction suggested itself. So that, in his con- 
versation, he probably gave free vent to every line of 
thought that occurred to him, and this accounts for its 
astonishing variety. He said that if a man lived for a 
thousand years he could not write down the thoughts of 
an ordinary lifetime, and that with every thought he 
expressed myriads of others sprang up in its place. Like 
Burke, he was a man whose thinking grew and expanded 
as he went along. He told a friend that he never knew 
he could speak in public until one day at a public dinner 
he had to make a speech; and then he found, when once 
started, he could express thought in a speech just as 
easily as he could on paper. After that he never hesi- 
tated to speak in public. 

Talking one night about our own early experiences, 
I recalled the name of a man under whom we both 
worked, whose repressive treatment of me as an appren- 
tice I remembered with no pleasant feeling. When I 
used to go up to this man's desk and ask for copy, he 
would sometimes keep me standing for five minutes be- 
fore he gave it to me. The galling part of this thing 
was that it made one feel as if he were a beggar asking 
for alms. 

"Yes," said Swinton, "Mac was by no means kind 



22 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

to US bo3^s, and I have pretty much the same feeling 
toward him. One night, about six or seven years after 
I left his employ, and when I was managing editor of 
the Times, I was told that a gentleman wished to see 
me on important business. I gave word that he should 
be brought in, and in he came. It was Mac, my old 
slave-master. 'What!' said he, 'are you managing editor 
of the Times f '1 am,' I replied; 'what is your busi- 
ness here?' Our positions were now reversed, and I 
had no hesitation in making him feel it. 'I have forty 
men on strike,' he said, 'and they have so abused me 
and injured my business I wish to make my case known 
to the public' Mac then went on rapidly with his 
story, which I listened to for a minute in silence, and 
then said: 'Well, I have no time to attend to you, but 
here is one of my reporters who may write up your 
case,' and left him. I had no hesitation in cutting him 
short, for he had cut me short many a time, God knows. 
I never saw the petty tyrant after that." 

"Did you know Cheetham?" I asked. "Well, this 
man Cheetham, who was an Englishman, went up to 
Mac one day, when he kept him standing, waiting, as 
usual, for copy, and he said: 'Mr. Mac, I would like 
you to know that I am a workman, not a beggar, and 
if you don't want to give me work, just let me know 
and I'll relieve you of my presence at once.' We all 
felt like cheering the bold typo, and I am now awfully 
sorry we didn't. But workmen were not so independent 
in those darys as they are to-day." 

"Perhaps not," said Swinton, "but they are learning 
a thing or two, and I trust they will keep on learning. 
Yet there are workshops where the men are much worse 
off than we were under Mac, who was, at heart, by no 



swinton's talk 2^ 

means a bad man. I have known him to do very kind 
things/' 

"So have I, but he spoiled them by his tyrannical 
conduct toward his employees." 

"There is another man/' said Swinton, "whom I dis- 
like to meet much more than Mac — a man, in fact, whom 
I dread to see more than any other man living. I mean 
Dr. Black, the surgeon, who once performed a painful 
operation on my right foot, and the whole horror of it 
comes up again at sight of him. I always dreaded phys- 
ical suffering." 

"You studied medicine yourself, did you not?" 
. "Medicine? In fact, I studied three or four profes- 
sions. When I was a young compositor reading Carlyle, 
Emerson, Coleridge and Montaigne, and listening every 
Sunday to Beecher's sermons, I thought the highest 
thing one could do was to become a preacher, and by 
eloquent discourse lift mankind from things of earth 
to those of heaven; so I studied theology, keeping at it 
until I found out that theology was not divinity, and 
theologians were not always divine. Next I thought the 
noblest thing one could do was to minister to diseased 
and suffering mankind, and bring health and joy where 
before were pain and sorrow ; so I studied medicine, and 
kept at it until I found out that medicine was not science 
and m.edical practitioners were not scientists. Then I 
thought I would study law, and at the bar stand up for 
the wronged and helpless; so I studied law and kept at 
it until I found out that the legal business was mainly 
a humbug, and lawyers greater humbuggers than the 
theologians or the physicians. Then I thought I would 
become an editor and enlighten mankind on their duty 
as citizens, expose the evil I had become acquainted with. 



24: CAREER AXD CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

and proclaim noble principles of action for all man- 
kind. So I became an editor,, and now I have at last 
discovered that editors are the greatest humbugs of all, 
^mere bamboozlers/ as Carljle calls them!^^ 

This may give the reader some idea of something 
Swinton was very fond of — winding up with a climax. 
And it may also serve to show how seldom the reality 
comes up to our ideals; how we all finally discover that 
our dolls are stuffed with sawdust and our heroes, many 
of them, made of very common clay. Swinton deter- 
mined to establish an editorial chair of a nobler sort — 
a chair in which there should be no humbug or foolery 
of any sort — and this was certainly the case when he 
started the personal organ which he called ^^John Swin- 
ton's Paper." When somebody asked him, while editing 
his paper, if he made money in it, he replied : 

"Did you ever hear of Washington, or Luther, or Gar- 
rison, making money by their work? No, sir; only mer- 
cenaries live to make money." 

When a certain influential New York clergyman asked 
him if he wanted help in his new enterprise, he replied: 

"No, thank you. If it will not live without the help 
of capitalists; if I cannot uphold it by my own efforts; 
if those for whom I am here do not support it, I shall 
let it die." 

"Perhaps they are not ripe for it," said the clergy- 
man. 

"Then I shall try to ripen them." 

How different this is from the conduct of those who 
establish Success papers purely by the aid of capitalists, 
whom they ever afterwards hold up as examples and 
worship as their creators! Mammon has more worshippers 
to-day than all the other gods together. 



CHAPTER V. 

HOW SWINTON BECAME A NEWSPAPER WRITER. — HENRY J. 
RAYMOND. 

I have been told that Swinton once deposited $30,000 
of his own money in the United States Treasury, as he 
did not believe in taking interest. He certainly prac- 
ticed what he preached. But I know he got bravely over 
that scruple, and subsequently invested his money as 
profitably as he could. 

He was always fond of strong and striking ways of 
putting things, of pointed antithesis and of coining new 
words. His "Vanderbillionaire" is an example of the 
latter. Of democracy he lately spoke as "demonoc- 
racy." Of a certain public man, with whom he was once 
on familiar terms, but who became envious, he spoke 
as "The Red Rooster of the Rockies," and of another as 
a "See-saw Scribe of the Satanic.'' When told that 
there was some talk of nominating a certain military 
man for the Presidency, he said: "If they do I shall 
kill him with two words — that are in the dictionary." 
On another occasion, while he was managing editor of 
the Times, he was told General Grant wanted to see 
him. 

"What do you think Grant wanted to see me for?" he 
said. 

"To ask you to accept an office, perhaps ?'' 

"Oh, no; he could not do that then. Probably he 
changed his mind after meeting me, or he had forgotten 
what he wanted to see me for; for the only thing of any 

25 



26 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

consequence he asked me was this: ^Do you think the 
stream of immigration arriving at this port will make 
up for the loss of men on the field of battle?' That 
is what he asked me, and I have never been able to make 
out to this day what he wanted to see me for." 

"Perhaps he mistook you for your brother William?" 

"I don't know." 

I asked him if newspaper writers did not sometimes 
regret that, with all the ability they displayed in their 
profession, their names were unknown to the public. 

"No," said he, "a newspaper writer does not care 
to be known; his work is but work to him, like any 
other; and so long as he succeeds in supplying what is 
wanted, and thus gaining a livelihood, that is all he 
cares for. If his contributions are well paid he is sat- 
isfied. Do you know," he continued, "that there is a 
kind of Free Masonry among newspaper men, certain 
marks and signs, by which they get to know each other? 
They learn the hand of nearly every leader-writer on 
the metropolitan press, and when a new hand appears 
they perceive it at once. For every man that is at all 
a man has a mind, a style and a language of his own. 
The original thinker or leader-writer is known by sure 
marks — words and expressions recognized at once. Just 
as you know a man by the soimd of his voice, so do they 
know him by the manner of his mind and speech. When 
a new writer appears you will hear them saying, 'Did 
you notice the quaint style or the peculiar expressions 
of that green hand on the Times or the Tribune? 
Did you perceive the trick he has of winding up his 
paragraphs with a jerk, or of striking the keynote in 
the first sentence?' Then you will hear them analyzing 
his style, noting his peculiarities, or pointing out his 



HOW SWINTON BECAME A NEWSPAPER WRITER 27 

general fashion, and ever afterward he is known to them. 
Of course, they soon find out his name, and he becomes 
one of them." 

"Were you thus discovered when you began to write 
ioT the Times r 

"Probably. After my first article or two Mr. Ray- 
mond sent for me and I became one of them. But let 
me tell you about the first newspaper article I wrote. 
I was studying medicine at that time (1858 or 1859), 
and came among a good many writers for the press. 
Do you know Briggs, the man who for so long a time 
was editor of the Sunday Courier? He was a gruff 
fellow, but a capital writer and editor, an old partner 
of Edgar Allan Poe in the Broadway Journal, and his 
paper was popular in its day. It was in his paper that 
my first article appeared. I thought I would try my 
hand in an essay on the treatment of hospital patients, 
a subject that occupied my thoughts at that time, and 
I sent it to Briggs. I watched the paper every Sunday 
for two or three weeks, but my article did not appear. 
So I began to think that I could not write. At last, to 
my delight and surprise, the article appeared, in big 
type, and I was so happy that I guess I read it over 
forty times. I remember I went striding up and down 
Broadway with the paper in my hand, reading it aloud 
as I went, the proudest man in New York. That was A 
red-letter day in my life." 

"How came you to write for the Times f" 

"Well, I will tell you. You know my brother Wil- 
iam began his newspaper career as a critic of the his- 
trionic performances of the great French actress, Made- 
moiselle Eachel, in New York. He knew French well, 
and also the drama, and was selected to do this work 



2S CAEEEB AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

for the Times. He had already made some reputation 
as a translator. Then he gave me the tip how to write 
for that paper — what subjects to take up — and so I 
wrote two or three articles which were accepted by Mr. 
Eaymond. This I kept up until Mr. Eaymond engaged 
me as a regular staff-writer.^' 

"You knew Raymond well. What kind of a man was he ?"' 

"One of the ablest men I ever knew. He would dash 
off a column an hour and then throw out suggestions to 
his writers for columns on other subjects. His mind 
was always teeming with ideas, and he could edit two 
or three papers as easily as he could one. Half an hour's 
talk with him was like reading half a dozen books at 
one sitting. I laever knew another man with such knowl- 
edge and such a memory. He could listen to a debate 
af two or three hours and then, without having taken a 
single note, come to the office and write the whole thing 
out for publicati(»." 

Mr. Swinton always spoke highly of Henry J. Eaymond, 
whom he regarded as a "born journalist." 

That night Swinton talked of the temptations of editors. 
"Why, sir," said he, "no man encounters such temptations 
as the editor of a metropolitan paper. Here is a man, for 
instance, who is trying to get a grant from Congress for 
his million-saving ship canal, or his deep-sunk river tunnel, 
or his big railroad or other corporation, or his scheme, 
whatever it be, and he wants the leading journal to 
advoca.te it. It ma}?^ be worth millions to him. Look at 
that rotten writer, Sweetwarbler, who cut such a fine figure 
on the Blunderbuss last summer! Where is he now? 
Gone; fallen from his high estate; neither he nor his 
manuscripts are ever more heard of in Printing House 
Square. He got his reward, and that is the end of him.'^ 



CHAPTER VI. 

eWINTON'S DESCRIPTION OF BENNETT AND GREELEY — HOW 

HE BECAME A SOCIALIST — HIS RELATIONS WITH 

CHARLES A. DANA. 

Swinton described the elder Bennett as one of the 
weirdest editors that ever lived — a gaunt, gray-eyed man 
with a forecast of what was coming, what was wanted, 
and what would pay. Bennett dictated often, but rarely 
wrote. Greeley wrote his articles with his own hand 
and gave large liberty to his staff. Bennett held every 
one by a tether; every one of his writers wrote accord-^ 
ing to his suggestion. When, on one occasion, one of 
his writers inserted an article not at all to his liking, he 
called him up and said: 

"What the deil made ye talk in that way? Dinna ye 
ken that sich talk will bring the hoos about yer ears? 
Noo, sit doon, and I'll show ye how to write on that 
subject." 

Whereupon he dictated an article quite in an oppo^ 
site key, and then said: "Noo, keep on singing in that 
tune, an' a' will be weel again.'' 

I must tell one of Swinton's stories about Greeley, at 
whom, though he highly respected the man, he loved to 
poke fun. One morning Greeley came down to the 
Tribune office, and, entering the composing-room in a 
rage, cried out in his peculiar falsetto : 

"Who the devil set up and who corrected that article 
of mine on Joe Smith?" 

Everybody stood silent. 

29 



30 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

"It has an abominable blunder, and the man who set 
it up is an ass, and the man who passed it in proof a 
jackass. Both should be kicked." 

The foreman now spoke up and declared it was accord- 
ing to copy. 

"According to copy!" roared Greeley. "If it is, you 
can call me a jackass, and kick me, too." 

The manuscript was produced, compared with the 
printed article, and found to be precisely according to 
copy. Then Greeley, standing out in the middle of the 
floor, and lifting up his coat-tails, said, meekly : 

"Will anybody kick me ? I am the jackass !" 

One day, while traveling with Swinton in an elevated 
train, a beggar came up and Swinton gave him some 
money. "I always give something," he said, "to the 
beggars I meet. It does not amount to much in a year. 
If you give a quarter or a dime to every beggar that asks 
you, you will find it does not exceed twenty-five dollars 
a year. That is my experience. It is nonsense to talk 
about impostors. Not one in ten is an impostor. Beg- 
ging is not such a profitable business as stealing. It 
is far easier to steal, legally, than to beg, which is illegal. 
I have known what it is to be without a cent in my 
pocket, and although I never thought of begging I have 
often thought of nabbing one of those Wall street mil- 
lionaires and saying to him, ^Disgorge some of your Ul- 
gotten gains, or, by Jehovah ! 1^11 throttle you !^ " 

"How did you become Socialistic?" 

"I never called myself a Socialist; never belonged to 
the party; never was a member of their organizations; 
never was under the heel of any Socialistic leader what- 
ever. My paper simply represented John Swinton, that 
is all. When nominate for Mayor by a few men, the 



SWINTON'S description of BENNETT AND GREELEY 31 

Socialist party managers told their followers to vote 
against me, and they did. I believe in some of their 
principles and in others which they do not believe in, 
and I advocated those I believe in, that is all. I study 
the world, and life, and laws, and other things, drawing 
my own deductions from them. I knew Karl Marx per- 
sonally. I met him in London, and I consider him one 
of the noblest men and most logical thinkers I ever 
knew. When I became an editor and saw how fortunes 
were made by a turn of the hand, by gambling tricks and 
secret combinations of capitalists, and how all this 
tended to the impoverishment of the community, I be- 
gan to see that the whole thing was wrong, and that 
the entire system ought to be changed. By the com- 
petitive system ever}' great manufacturer and miner 
tries to undersell the other; and in order to do this he 
must lessen the cost of production; that is, screw down 
the wages of his workmen as low as possible. So I be- 
came convinced that the relations of the hired workman 
toward his capitalist employer were as wrong as those 
of the purchased negro-slave toward his white master; 
and I made up my mind to do what I could to change 
them, that is all. I had made the acquaintance of Wen- 
dell Phillips and found that he, too, had come to simi- 
lar conclusions. He believed that the capitalist system 
was steadily undermining the world and deteriorating 
the race, bringing his countrymen into a condition quite 
as wretched as that of the negro-slave; and he vehe- 
mently condemned it. So did I. I saw with my own 
eyes the measureless poverty, misery, and degradation 
of the laboring poor on the East Side of New York 
City, and I resolved, God helping me, to strive to deliver 
them, or, if not them, at least their children, from this 



33 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

modem Moloch, capitalism." I have heard that Justus 
Schwab had a great deal to do with the making of John 
Swinton a Socialist. It was he who probably showed 
him around on the East Side of New York City. 

Of the journal which he established to advocate these 
views, and of the results of that advocacy, I shall say 
little; but I may say here that although the enterprise 
failed, and he lost his health, his eyesight, and the earn- 
ings of a lifetime in it, he seems never to have regretted 
having made it, but always .recurred to it with satisfac- 
tion. With him Poverty was nothing compared with 
Principle. 

Although most people regard his attempt as about 
as mad as that of Dame Partington with her mop and 
broom, it was worth making, nevertheless, as it undoubt- 
edly, like all such efforts, furthered the cause of prog- 
ress. John Brown's attempt to free the blacks at Har- 
per's Ferry was a mad undertaking and a failure, but 
who to-day will say it was not worth making? Who 
knows how Swinton's attempt may be regarded a cen- 
tury hence? The ideas of such men eventually bring 
measures of practical relief, beneficent enactments which 
they themselves may never live to see. 

But he made one great mistake at the outset. He 
should have been "sure he was right, and then go 
ahead." When he had come out for Socialist principles 
and the Labor cause he should have joined at once the 
Labor organizations and become their exponent, their 
champion, their leader. He should have made friends 
with the Knights of Labor and with every other knightly 
organization that believed in the rights of labor, and 
done his best to advocate and realize the principles which 
he and they believed in. Without their aid he could not 



SWINTON's description of BENNETT AND GKEELEY 33 

possibly succeed. There is no career, no profession, no 
individual who is or can be entirely independent. We 
all depend on one another, and every man who would 
accomplish anything must work with his fellows. An 
isolated, independent, unsocial man is merely "a voice 
crying in the wilderness," which never does and never 
can accomplish any great reform. 

The Socialists declare that they saw from the start 
that Swinton's paper was foredoomed to failure. He 
had made it a personal organ at the very time when all 
personality should have been merged into the general 
good cause. If he had only joined the Knights of Labor 
and become one of them they would have supported him, 
which they did not. But then Swinton thought he would 
have been under the heel of the Boss Knights and obliged 
to do their bidding, which he could not do. He hated 
to be under any boss; he must have his own way or none 
at all. The fact is, Swinton was not at all worldly wise; 
if he could not succeed in his own way he didn't care 
to work in any other; he was always ready to sacrifice 
pecuniary advantages to personal freedom. 

Yet it must be said that, although he would not be 
under the dominion of any union, or of all of them, he 
never decried one of them. On the contrary, he upheld 
and defended the unions as necessary combinations 
against the rapacity and cruelty of the capitalists. He 
knew that there was a time when factory workers had 
to begin at five o'clock in the morning and work till 
dark for $3 a week; that masons and carpenters and 
shoemakers used to get 50 cents a day for twelve hours' 
work, and that the unions had destroyed all that; and 
he could not but perceive that they had done immense 
things for working people. But he thought he could. 



34 Cx^REEK AND COXVERSATION OE JOHN SWINTON 

nevertheless, work for them and be independent of the 
unions. That was his fatal mistake. 

Swinton had the courage of his opinions. He believed 
in them so thoroughly that he was willing to risk his 
all in their realization. Probably his most marked char- 
acteristic was a sort of defiant independence; he would 
speak his mind and tell the trutli in his own way if the 
heavens should fall. Many others, who have seen the 
evil condition of mankind as clearly as he has, have not 
thought it necessary to offer up or risk anything of their 
own to improve it. But he put his wealth, as well as his 
health, into the business ; he was sure he was right. His 
feeling may be best expressed in the words of Frederic 
Harrison : 

"To me, at least," says that excellent writer, "it 
would be enough to condemn modem society as hardly 
an advance on slavery and serfdom if the permanent 
condition of society were to be that which we behold, 
in which 90 per cent of the actual producers of wealth 
have no home that they can call their own beyond the 
end of the week ; have no bit of soil, or so much as a room, 
that belongs to them; have nothing of value of any kind, 
except so much old furniture as will go in a cart; have 
the precarious chance of weekly wages, which barely 
suffices to keep them in health; are housed, for the most 
part, in places which no man thinks fit for a horse, and 
are separated by so narrow a margin from destitution 
that a month of bad trade, sickness or unexpected loss 
brings them face to face with hunger and pauperism. 
* * * If this is to be the permanent arrangement of 
modern society, civilization must be held to bring a curse 
on the great majority of mankind." 

Some of Swinton's early friends, who have made 



money and secured high positions in the world, consider 
him the victim of a delusion; but what generous heart 
will affirm that he, in his defeat and poverty, was not 
more worthy of respect than they in their success and 
comfort? He sacrificed his all in a noble endeavor to 
benefit others, while they employed their entire energies 
to further their own interest. Let them enjoy their 
wealth; no man envies them; and let him enjoy his self- 
respect and the respect of all noble men. I shall never 
forget the scornful tone and amused expression with 
which he told me of the visit of one of these gentr}^ a 
friend of his youth, who had deserted literature and 
learning and grown rich as the land agent of a money- 
loaning and land-grabbing concern, which finally came 
to grief. This gentleman had evidently called upon 
Swinton to see if he could not induce him to boom with 
his pen the moribund concern with which he was con- 
nected; but when he approached him on the subject he 
did so as King John approached Hubert; he could not 
quite '"'out with the murder," feeling, no doubt, that he 
had the wrong man to deal with; and so left without 
clearly stating the object of his visit. 

"I could not tell from his talk," said Swinton, "what 
he really wanted, but I became convinced that the fel- 
low was unscrupulous, and when he perceived that I was 
not one of his ilk he dropped it." Alas! what changes 
Time sometimes works in the character of men who were 
as one in early life. 

Swinton's ancestors, for their feats in arms, were con- 
sidered worthy of honorable mention by Sir Walter 
Scott— 

And Swinton laid the lance in rest 
That tamed of yore the sparkling crest 
Of Clarence's Plantagenet — 



36 CAEEEE AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

but the modem knight, in real courage and heroism, 
stands far above them. They spent their energies in 
attacking the feudalism of force; he in attacking the 
feudalism of capital, in endeavoring to rescue the vic- 
tims of capitalism from a slavery worse than that of 
the old feudal lords. How this tremendous energy of 
the Scots has been turned from the arts of war into 
those of civilization is one of the finest things in history. 

"When you were on this track/' I asked him one day, 
^Tiow did you get along with your chief, Chas. A. Dana 
of the Sun r 

"Never did any man,'* he replied, "never did any 
saint exercise more forbearance toward a far-gone sin- 
ner than Mr. Dana exercised toward me. Although he 
knew, while I was on the staff of his paper, that I was 
actively engaged in a crusade which he disapproved, he 
never said a word ; never gave me an advice ; never inter- 
fered with me in any way. Although he knew that I 
was, night after night, advocating doctrines to which 
he was diametrically opposed, he never attempted to 
change my course. I could not, of course, advocate 
Socialism in the 8un, but I wrote there with perfect 
freedom on all the subjects which I touched. On the 
day after I had addressed a meeting of some 20,000 
people in Tompkins Square, New York, which was sur- 
rounded by the Seventh Eegiment with loaded guns, 
ready to fire, and illuminated by hundreds of torches 
and flambeaus of every description — on the day after 
this memorable meeting I came down to the office as 
usual, at about two o'clock, and expected Mr. Dana 
would refer to it, but he did not. He came up, affable as 
ever, with the usual question: 'Well, what have you 
got for to-morrow?' That was all. I never had any 



SWINTON's description of BENNETT AND GREELEY 37 

words with him on the subject. This, I tell you, will be 
one of his titles to remembrance in years to come/' 

Of Dana as a critic of matter designed for his paper, 
however, he spoke as "brutally severe." "He would 
prune and cut to the bone," said Swinton, "and then 
declare that the cutting was not quite enough." But 
Dana could praise highly, too. Swinton showed me a 
letter from him, in which, after speaking in the highest 
terms of one of Swinton's articles, he said he would not 
have "lost the last ten lines for five dollars a line" — 
upon which Swinton remarked he would like to charge 
him at that rate for future contributions. 

The conduct of Charles A. Dana toward John Swinton 
should not be forgotten. When others turned their backs 
on him, Dana was still his friend, re-engaging him and 
trusting him completely; for he knew that Swinton was 
an honorable man as well as an able writer. Dana had 
been "through the mill," at the Brook Farm community, 
and "knew how it was himself." Swinton often spoke of 
him as a man of rare scholarship and of remarkable attain- 
ments as a philologist and linguist. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

UNJUST JUDGES AND CAPITALISTS. 

Swinton was generally too sweeping in his denuncia- 
tions of those who acted contrary to his ideas of what 
was right. I doubt whether such unrestrained denun- 
ciations are of much service. Cool, close reasoning or 
sound argument is, in my judgment, much more effective 
in producing conviction. Here, for instance, at a meeting 
of the Building Trades Council, held some years ago in 
Cooper Union, to protest against the decision of the 
Court of Appeals in declaring unconstitutional the pre- 
vailing rate of wages and the State stone-dressing laws, 
Mr. Swinton, who presided at the meeting, began by 
denouncing the forces which would crush the working 
man, and then called for cheers for the 'heroes" of the 
steel trades, who were demanding nine hours a day. The 
Times reporter then continues ^ 

"I say, also,'' Mr. Swinton went on, "three cheers for 
those brave men in Albany who are baring their bosoms 
to the cowards of the Twenty-third Regiment of 
Brooklyn !" 

At this the audience, which filled the hall to its capac- 
ity, broke loose. They shouted and yelled. 

"That's what they are!" could be heard above the 
tumult. "Give it to them, Mr. Swinton!" 

"These are not the men," went on Mr. Swinton, "who 
fought with the man I have seen standing on this very 
platform and whose name was Abraham Lincoln. They 
are rickety pukes, these whippersnappers I saw march- 

38 



UNJUST JUDGES AND CAPITALISTS 39 

ing through Brooklyn the day before yesterday on their 
way to shoot down unarmed men, women, and children. 
But, by God, I tell you that it will not be very long 
before these brave men at Albany revolt. They will not 
always bare their breasts. They will yet use something 
sharper than bayonet, something that will cut keener 
than the sword. 

"Don^t you believe that thousands of American work- 
ingmen are going to let those dry-goods clerks, those 
puny brainless fops, mow them down for very long. 
They have brawny arms, strong bodies, and plenty of 
brains, and they will yet make use of them." 

"You bet they will, and before long!" came from the 
audience, with other yells of approval for the speaker's 
sentiments. 

Several of the other speakers, labor men, referred to 
the subject during the evening, but none went so far as 
Mr. Swinton. 

"Let me tell you," continued Mr. Swinton, "that a 
judge was hanged in Clay County, Missouri, not long 
ago, and another judge in Michigan is at this moment 
looking out from behind the bars. There have been more 
born criminals among men of the bench than among all 
the pirates that ever sailed the high seas!" This sally 
was greeted with laughter and applause. 

"The bench has been always ready to sell out liberty. 
It supported a king in this country until the revolution- 
ists put the bench where it came from. The bench sup- 
ported slavery in this country until it fell under the 
weight of it; it now supports the slavery of capital, 
which is grinding workmen down, and it will continue to 
do so until the workingmen treat the judges as the fellows 
in Missouri and Michigan were treated. 



40 CAREER AXD CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

"They must take capital b}^ the throat and crush it. 
Every step in the progress of the human race has been 
made with the determined purpose of overriding every- 
thing that was detrimental to the best interests of the 
people in general. You will have to overcome four 
Satanic forces — the Satanic bench, the Satanic press, the 
Satanic pulpit, and the Satanic trusts. 

"Let the laboring men use their forces and they will 
drive these influences out, as I hope they will be driven 
out at Albany. They will drive out men like this Paddy 
O'Brien in Albany. [Laughter.] I don't know whether 
he is a Fardowner or an Orangeman, or a descendant of 
Brian Boru, but I do know that he doesn't know the 
law." 

Great cheering greeted the speaker when he concluded 
his remarks. 

Then came Mr. Henry George: "What is the essen- 
tial principle of this decision ? It is, that the State, which 
is a collection of individuals, cannot exercise the right 
that an individual may exercise. 

"We fought out the question of chattel slavery, and 
now comes up the question of industrial slavery — -now 
comes up the question of the right to make a living. And 
what do we see to-day? Armed troops brought in to 
settle a question where ^Privilege' has the power of the 
courts and the militia behind it." [Hisses and groans.] 

"Shame, shame," came from the audience. 

"The fundamental principle underlying the industrial 
evil is the question of privilege. We have a traction 
company enjoying the privilege of carrying all the peo- 
ple in this city; a gas company, electric company, 
telegraph company, and numerous other companies exist- 
ing by privilege. 



UNJUST JUDGES AXD CAPITALISTS 41 

"The question we have to solve is to destroy the prin- 
ciple that puts the wrong kind of men on the bench. 
We can do no better than to take this trouble to Albany 
in connection with this decision of the court. This is a 
thing that may occur in Brooklyn, or any other part of 
the country at any time, and we must be prepared to 
strike at the evil at once." 

Before the resolutions were passed, Mr. Swinton, who 
referred to the Court of Appeals as ^'brainless asses," 
said he could get a judge as good as Judge O'Brien for 
$1.50, and referring to a policeman in the aisle, said: 

"I could get a man to take the job of that big fat man 
with the brass buttons for half the money." 

Now, I do not believe that this kind of talk does any 
good. It is facts, figures, and example that make an 
impression, and not mere denunciation of judges and 
capitalists. When American workingmen come to know, 
for instance, that in the city of Glasgow, where the 
city government owns the street railways, the gas- 
works, the water-supply, etc., the income from these 
sources, at very moderate rates, is so great that there are 
hardly any taxes at all to be paid, and that one may 
ride in a trolley-car from one end of the city to the 
other, with a seat, for twopence; that in Milan one 
may ride for a half-penny, and that even then the car- 
service renders the government a profit of 28 per cent 
of the gross receipts, and when he compares these things 
with Philadelphia, for instance, where $250,000 was 
offered by Mr. Wanamaker for the privilege of running 
the trolley-cars, and refused by the aldermen, who 
gave it away to political henchmen (for a considera- 
tion) ; that the cable-car service of New York, which 



42 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

returns millions to the owners every year, was bartered 
away for a mere bagatelle, the barterers receiving many 
thousands of dollars for their own pockets in ex- 
change ;— when, I say, our American workmen, who pay 
for all these things out of their hard earnings, come to 
know and understand these things, they will soon put 
an end to them, without much talk about the matter, or 
about the men who now own them. Time works won- 
ders; and where there is a free press, or where the 
press becomes free, unsubsidized or owned by the million- 
aires, with free speech and universal suffrage, such 
things cannot last. A day of reckoning is surely com- 
ing, when the Morgans, Eockefellers, Vanderbilts, and 
the fifteen hundred other millionaires of this country 
will have to step down and out. When the will is formed, 
the way will be found. 

Then let us pray that come it may— 

As come it will for a' that— 
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth. 

May bear the gree, and a' that; 

For a' that, and a' that. 

It's coming yet, for a' that, 
That man to man, the world o'er. 

Shall brothers be, for a' that! 



CHAPTER VIII. 

AN EXTRAORDINARY FEAT— AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT A MAN 
MAY DO UNDER PRESSURE. 

On one occasion, shortly after he had returned from 
Europe, and while working as a space-writer for the 
Sun, Mr. Swinton performed the most extraordinary feat 
in the way of composition I ever heard of. In a lecture 
which he once delivered in Jersey City, he thus told the 
story: 

"It is proposed that I shall tell here this evening 
something about a new book, and the making of it, and 
the purpose of it, and the contents of it. The object is 
to serve those among you who may not be the authors 
of books, and who are unacquainted with the methods 
of bookmaking— more especially those among you who 
have not given heed to the theme of this particular vol- 
ume, or to the questions that are taken up in it. 

*'One day last July, when I was busily engaged in 
my daily work as a newspaper man, a stranger, the repre- 
sentative of a Philadelphia publishing firm, called upon 
me at my house, and asked me to write a book. It was 
the time of the great Chicago railroad strike of last 
summer, and the great coal strike, and many other 
strikes. That which is known as the Labor question was, 
as we say, in the air; and this was to be my theme. I 
protested that I could not do it. He urged me. He told 
me wonderful things of its assured success. 

"Finding my protests unavailing, I inquired as to 
the size of the desired book. He would have a volume 

43 



44 CAEEER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

of 500 octavo pages, small pica type, and the manuscript 
of the book must be ready in twenty days. I made a 
computation. There were 240 or 250 words in a page 
of that size. This was 25,000 words to 100 pages, or 
125,000 words in the whole book of 500 pages — all to be 
completed in tw^ty days. The task was impossible. My 
visitor was implacable. 

"You may not know that professional writers have 
their stint of tuords per day. One thousand words are 
a fair day's task; one thousand five hundred are a good 
day^s work; two thousand are a hard job even for an 
able-bodied man. I know writers who can turn out three 
thousand or more words per day; but they are few. 

"That illustrious Frenchman, the elder Dumas, was a 
prodigiously rapid writer, and his daily work averaged 
thirty-two octavo pages, or perhaps six thousand words. 
But there has been but one Dumas, and he was a man 
of genius — though a quadroon. Shakespeare must have 
been a very rapid thinker and writer; for he died when 
only fifty-two, and wrote nearly all of those prodigious 
plays — begging the pardon of Ignatius Donnelly — in about 
twenty or twenty-five years, 

"I am not speaking here of mere rapidity in penman- 
ship, but also of the processes of thought that are involved 
in any composition of value. 

"How, then, could I compose a book of 125,000 words 
in twenty days ? 

"My persecutor was inexorable. ±\.t last I told him I 
would try. He demanded the preface of my book at once. 
I pondered. I was familiar with the subject, having 
thought and spoken and written much upon it in 
other years. I hastily sketched a plan as I talked with 
him. 



AN EXTRAORDINARY TEAT 45 

"He said he would wait in the house till I had writ- 
ten the preface, which he desired to take with him to 
Philadelphia that evening. 

"Becoming desperate under his urging eye, I sat down, 
and in an hour gave him the preface. 

"The first chapter was mailed in a few days. Chap- 
ter followed chapter. I worked day and night, keeping 
up pluck with never-ending pots of coffee. Three hun- 
dred of the five hundred pages were written, and time 
was nearly up. I padded. I put in things I had for- 
merly written. The twenty days were out, and over one 
hundred pages were yet needed. I had to get a few days 
of grace. Finally, the book of 500 pages and 125,000 
words was finished. Its title is, Striking for Life." 

One would imagine that the author, as well as the book, 
was about finished by this time. But the fact is, this 
feat shows what a prodigious strain Swinton could en- 
dure, what an immense amount of work he could accom- 
plish, when put to it. This was what turned his hair 
white and made him old, when he was managing editor 
of the Times in the civil-war years. 

I have heard him say that the most severe, exacting 
and exhausting work in the world is the editorship of a 
metropolitan daily paper: It must come out, sure as the 
sun, every day in the year; and the editor must see that 
every department, foreign and domestic, commercial and 
literary, news and editorial, is in good shape ; and whether 
he feels like it or not, he must often Write at two o'clock 
in the morning, or dictate what is to be written, on some 
topic or event of the day, with the thermometer at 120 
degrees in his sanctum. There is no letting up in this 
business; it is perpetual motion; and even a man of steel 
will eventually break down in this everlasting racket. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SWIXTON AND INGERSOLL. — SWINTON AS AN ORATOK. 

Sometimes Swinton talked of religion; but it would be 
impossible for me to report his rhapsodies on this subject. 
One day I asked him plainly: "Do you believe in a 
divine government of the world, and in the divine origin 
of man ?^' 

"Of course I do," he replied. "Without that, life would 
be intolerable. Even if it could be proved that in the 
illimitable universe there is nothing but matter, 'and no 
Creator, no Divine Father to whom we can look for help, 
then I should say that Man, small and insignificant as 
he is, is greater and more deserving of veneration than 
all the universe put together; for he who can examine, 
compare, measure, and ascertain the laws of the universe 
is a thousand times more deserving of respect and venera- 
tion than any illimitable extent of senseless matter. T 
can not bear the thought that we come from nothing 
and go to nothing." 

"I think with Goethe," I replied, "that without evil 
we could not conceive of good; without vice we could not 
conceive of virtue; without pain we could not enjoy pleas- 
ure; that both are necessary to our existence; and that 
happiness consists in the struggle against evil and in the 
pursuit of truth and culture. So that, after all, our world 
is, as it is, the best possible world. By the way, how do 
you get along with your friend. Col. Ingersoll, on the 
subject of religion?" 

46 



SWINTON AS AN ORATOR 47 

"Oh, we never talk about religion. He knows my views 
and respects them. We uave much to talk of besides 
religion. Do you know that Ingersoll is a profound 
Shakespearian scholar, a great admirer of Kobert Burns,* 
and indeed familiar with most of the best literature of 
modem times? He is an excellent talker, almost as elo- 
quent in private conversation as in his public addresses — 
more so, I should say — and at his house I have enjoyed 
truly original and refreshing conversation. You some- 
times find there a company of twenty or more people, all 
interesting characters, and never hear a word about re- 
ligion.'' 

"What a loss Christianity suffered when that man 
turned infidel !" 

♦By the way, I think the lines composed by IngersoU on Burns, 
on visiting: his birthplace, are among the strongest, most striking 
and impressive lines ever written on that ill-rewarded but much- 
loved poet. I have been told he wrote these verses on the spot, 
and that they are now framed and hung up in the "chief room" 
of the cottage itself. I can well conceive how thoroughly Ingersoll 
appreciated and loved the man who wrote "A man's a man for a' 
that" and so many other thoroughly liberal and democratic poems. 
Burns and Ingersoll were intellectually (though not spiritually) 
twin brothers. Here are the lines: 

Though Scotland boasts a thousand names 

Of patriot, king, and peer, 
The noblest, grandest of them all 

Was loved and cradled here: 
Here lived the gentle peasant-prince. 

The loving cotter-king. 
Compared with whom the greatest lord 

Is but a titled thing. 

•Tis but a cot roofed in with straw, 

A hovel made of clay; 
One door shuts out the snow and storm. 

One window greets the day; 
And yet I stand within this room. 

And hold all thrones in scorn; 
For here, beneath this lowly thatch. 

Love's sweetest bard was born. 

Within this hallowed hut I feel 

Like one who clasps a shrine, 
When the glad lips at last have touched 

The something deemed divine. 
And here the world through all the years, 

As long as day returns, 
A tribute of its love and tears 

Will pay to Robert Burns. 



48 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

"I don^t know about that. He makes people think, and 
if Christianity is true, he cannot hurt it. He may kill 
some of the pseudo dogmas of the modem church, but he 
cannot slay Christ. Ingersoll has a faith of his own, as 
all thinking men have; for he knows that no reasonable 
philosophy can be founded on a series of negations. His 
misfortune is lack of reverence, lack of spiritual perspect- 
ive, lack of faith. A logician and reasoner, an eagle-eyed, 
big-brained, and brawny-armed iconoclast, he instantly 
attacks and demolishes any structure that presents a flaw ; 
but he has no sense for those divine things which are be- 
yond the domain of reason, whose existence we know by 
intuition." 

^*^He was a good fellow in social life, wasn^t he?" 
"Ingersoll was a good, kind, generous f^ellow, who loved 
his fellow-men and wished to rid them of all fear concern- 
ing death and after death. 

" 'He had a tear for pity, and a hand 
Open as day for melting: charity.' 

"Though I never could subscribe to any creed," he con- 
tinued, "I never lost my faith in God. Belief in a Su- 
preme Being, a Divine Father, who created man for good 
purposes, and a belief in a future state where we shall see 
again th#se whom we have loved in this world — this is 
rooted in human nature, and cannot be eradicated. The 
universal existence of this belief is a proof of its truth. 
'It must be so,' as Cato says; for without that we should 
become the victims of Despair," 

Like all true reformers, who strike out from accepted 
ideas and the established order of things, Ingersoll was, 
I think, the exponent of the thought of the masses of the 
people; and I am inclined to think that he was simply 
the spokesman for many persons who are dissatisfied with 



SWINTON AS AN ORATOR 49 

existing beliefs, T3ut cannot fully or clearly tell why. Cer- 
tainly he had a considerable following, and found many 
hearers whenever he spoke. What thinking man can de- 
clare to-day that he is entirely satisfied with the past his- 
tory and the present orthodox interpretatioBS of Chris- 
tianity? One thing is clear to me, and that is, that Inger- 
soll has given utterance to the conviction of the voiceless 
multitude, that the doctrine of eternal punishment is a 
delusion — a cruel imposition on the credulous nature of 
man. It is not, as he says himself, the immortality of the 
soul that IngersoU denies, but an immortality of pain. No 
sane man believes in that doctrine to-day. The Almighty 
cannot be a God of vengeance. 

Swinton had, in his paper, often lamented the want of 
an orator for the progressive or labor party. I have some- 
times thought that if he could have brought IngersoU over 
to the labor party, the history of that party might have 
been of a more cheerful character. From what I have 
known of him, I wonder he did not join that party. I 
think, however, he sympathized with its aims. 

I have said that Swinton's ruling spirit was one of de^ 
fiant independence. This explains why he so often cham- 
pioned the unpopular side or the unpopular man. Precisely 
where others recoiled, or held back for fear of losing caste, 
he would come gallantly forward and take the unpopular 
man warmly by the hand, and introduce him to his friends. 
When Henri Rochef ort and Prince Kropotkine came to 
this country, he was one of the first to welcome them to 
the land of liberty. These were among those men whom 
the "highly respectable^' and the "unco gude'' dreaded to 
associate with ; they would not come near them from fear 
of defilement. Just for this reason Swinton stepped for- 
ward and said: "Never mind, my friends; you are wel- 



50 CAREER AXD CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

come all the same; come along and dine with me, and I 
shall then call a meeting and introduce you to the Ameri- 
can public." This he did with Henri Rochef ort, the 
banished communist, and with Prince Kropotkine, the 
exiled nihilist, and with many others. Wherever a friendly 
hand was needed, Swinton was there; wherever anyone 
was ostracised on account of his principles, Swinton stood 
by him. He never thought of himself or counted the cost ; 
he knew Christ was on his side, and that was enough for 
him; he would go in among poor, forsaken outcasts and 
speak a word of cheer or comfort to them, or offer them 
what help he could, no matter what others thought of his 
conduct. 

Perhaps the most dreaded name in Europe or America 
is that of Karl Marx, the author of that famous book, 
^'Capital." Swinton knew and conversed with him in 
London; and I have heard a curious story concerning the 
parting words of these two men. Swinton expressed the 
brief and sententious inquiry: "Wliat is?" whereupon 
Marx, the oracle, replied: "Struggle!" 

When, shortly after, Karl Marx's death, a memorial 
meeting in his honor was held at Cooper Institute, where 
all the nationalities of Europe were represented, both on 
the platform and in the audience, and where speeches 
were made in all their languages, Swinton made one of 
the most brilliant orations of his life, surpassing those 
of all the foreigners, in which he fearlessly eulogized Marx 
as a patriot, philosopher, and philanthropist, and elicited 
the unbounded applause not only of those who under- 
stood him, but of those who didn't. The foreigners de- 
clared they understood his meaning, though not his 
words. This was, in fact, a peculiar trait of Swinton's; 
he could make everv one understand him. Marx was a 



SWINTON AS AN ORATOR 51 

congenial subject for him; for he was always more or 
less a student of philosophy, and being a man of wide 
reading and great power of expression, with matchless 
powers of gesticulation and facial expression, he could 
make himself profoundly felt and understood even by 
those who knew no English. He was, in fact, as anyone 
could see from his talk, a bom orator, who could, on 
any subject that enlisted his sjrmpathies, fascinate and 
enchain any audience, native or foreign. 

This may be shown by the curious way in which he 
talked with Eochefort. For when I asked him how he, 
not knowing French, managed to get along with the 
Frenchman, who knew no English, he said: "Oh, that 
was an easy task. I used only those words of Latin deriva- 
tion which are pretty much the same in French as in 
English, and made myself quite well understood. If I 
wanted to say I liked somebody, I would say : ^My senti- 
ments of admiration for this personality are difficult to 
announce ;' or if I wanted to damn somebody, I would say : 
^I execrate the malefactor,' and he understood me perfectly. 
Rochefort spoke in the same way to me." 

Dr. Johnson, when on the Continent, spoke to learned 
Frenchmen and Italians in Latin; Swinton latinized his 
English for this Frenchman. Johnson's written English 
was latinized enough, in all conscience; but I doubt 
whether he could have performed this feat. 



CHAPTER X. 

JOHN SWINTON's paper. 

To recapitulate some of the events in his later career: 
After the death of Mr. Eaymond, Swinton left the Times 
and became Mr. Dana's chief assistant on the Sun, where 
he was employed for twenty-two years as editorial writer 
and managing editor. When Dana spent a year in Europe, 
Swinton managed the paper so well that few people knew 
of the absence of the editor-in-chief. It was during his 
occupanc}^ of this position that he became affiliated with 
the Labor party. He often spoke at their gatherings; 
anathematized robbers and capitalists in his own vigorous 
way, and became a shining light among the labor people 
generally. At one time he was nominated for Mayor of 
New York ; at another for State Senator ; but how near he 
came to being elected to either position the reader may 
imagine. He was nominated, not by the Socialists, who 
voted against him, but by the United Labor party ; and al- 
though defeated he received a considerable number of votes. 
It will be many a year before such a man, in running for 
an office, can overcome the prejudices of party leaders, the 
power of capitalism, or the machinations of politicians. 

For five years, in a weekly paper of his own, written 
almost solely by his own hand, called John Swinton s 
Payer, he maintained a desperate struggle against the 
"Capitalist System," and pleaded eloquently for a 
fairer share of the fruits of labor to the laborer and the 
artisan. He and Mrs. Swinton worked night and day 
to keep this paper alive. They gave up every pleasure 

52 



"JOHN swinton's paper" 53 

and every comfort in its behalf; spent over $40,000 in 
the eiiort, and finally succumbed — victims of the apathy 
of the people for whom they fought. 

Among the hundreds of labor unions there was not 
one — though they never hesitated to spend thousands of 
dollars on a strike — to offer a helping hand to a strug- 
gling brother who spent his all — ^health, wealth, strength 
— in advocating their cause. Yet, how could they? He 
was not one of them. This man was too independent for 
them. He could neither stoop to the tricks of trade nor 
become the tool of any labor organization. Independence 
was the very breath of his nostrils. Neither millionaires 
nor trades unions could move him from the course he 
deemed best and determined to follow. He fought, failed, 
and suffered alone and in silence. 

"The way of the reformer," says Mr. W. J. Jordan, 
"is hard, very hard. The world knows little about it; 
for it is rarely that a reformer shows the scars of the 
conflict, the pain of hope deferred, the mighty waves of 
despair that wash over a great purpose. There have 
been two or three recent instances where men of sincere 
aim and high ambition have permitted the world to hear 
an uncontrolled sob of hopelessness or a word of bit- 
terness at the seeming emptiness of all the struggle. 
But men of great purpose and high ideals should know 
that the path of the reformer is loneliness. He must 
live from within ; his aims must be his source of strength. 
He must not expect the tortoise to sympathize with the 
flight of the eagle. A great purpose is an isolation. The 
world cares naught for your struggles; it cares only to. 
rejoice in your final triumph. Christ was alone in Geth- 
semane ; but on the Mount, where food was provided, the 
attendance was four thousand.'^ 



54 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

Though Swinton^s demands were explicit enough, and 
though he aimed at no changes except such as might be 
made by law, I am inclined to think that, in his en- 
deavors to realize his aims, he went the wrong way to 
work. Instead of vehemently attacking capitalists and 
monopolists, millionaires and billionaires, he should, in 
my judgment, have tried to find out some means of rec- 
onciling labor and capital, employee and employer; en- 
deavored to show how each might work for the benefit 
of the other, and made some appeal to the dominant as 
well as the dominated class. For, assuredly, as long as 
the world lasts and talents and characters differ, there 
will be rich and poor, capitalist and laborer, brainworker 
and muscle-worker; and the grand task of the coming 
man is to show how these two classes may work fairly 
and satisfactorily together. James Parton wrote me that 
he had taken John Swinton's paper until he discovered 
that he had no plan of reconciliation to offer, and then he 
gave it up. So it was, probably, with others. 

Capitalist and workman must, somehow, work to- 
gether, and how this may be done to the best interests 
of both is what we want to know. Tom Hood, who sym- 
pathized with the poor as deeply, perhaps, as any re- 
former that ever lived, thus wrote on his deathbed: 
"Certain classes at the poles of society are too far 
asunder; it should be the duty of our writers to draw 
them nearer by kindly attraction, not to aggravate the 
existing repulsion and place a wider gulf between rich 
and poor, with Hate on the one side and Fear on the 
other." This is the true doctrine, the right key to strike, 
and the only one likely to produce good results. As 
sure as human nature will remain what it is, "the poor 
ye will always have with ye,'^ and the question is, how 



"JOHN swinton's paper" 55 

shall the poor be fairly dealt with? How shall the em- 
ployer share his gains or losses with his employees ? This 
seems to me the first thing to be agreed upon. One of 
the best steps in this direction, now common in many 
large business houses, is that of giving shares in the busi- 
ness to their employees. Could this not be done in the 
factories, the coal-mines, and the steel trades? It would 
put an end to strikes, and modify all the evils of trusts 
and corporations. If you could do that, Mr. Carnegie, 
it would do more good than all your libraries. 

Swinton should not have addressed himself exclusively 
to working people. The laboring classes did not appre- 
ciate him; most of them think there is nothing finer in 
the world than getting rich, and consider it absurd to 
expect a rich man to give up any portion of his gains 
for their benefit. Only an enthusiast like Swinton could 
do that. He should have addressed himself also to the 
better portion of the well-to-do classes, who alone are 
capable of understanding and appreciating his arguments 
and efforts, and who alone are capable of bringing for- 
ward measures which would benefit the toilers. If he 
could have touched their hearts, awakened their sense of 
duty, he might have accomplished much ; but the laboring 
classes are not yet sufficiently enlightened to be moved to 
take effective steps in their own behalf. 

Besides, he endeavored to do too much; he undertook 
the duties of business manager as well as those of editor. 
Had he had some efficient helper in the business part 
of the enterprise, leaving him entirely free to do the 
editorial work, the result might have been different. The 
success of a newspaper or periodical does not depend on 
its editor alone, but probably more on its business man- 
ager. The advertisements are the life of every paper. 



56 CAREER AXD CONVEBSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

Then, again, there are large revenues connected with a 
newspaper — advertisements for patent medicines, etc. — 
which Swinton did not consider honest and would not 
accept. Though "the way of the transgressor is hard," 
Swinton seems to have found the way of the honest 
editor still harder. There are few men in any career 
to-day who rise to the height of independence on which 
he stood. To have kept on working, almost day and night, 
for five years, losing money every week, gaining few 
friends and losing many old ones, all for the sake of 
principle, is, I repeat, what few men will do at the present 
day — or at any time. 

Though it failed, it must not be supposed that Swin- 
ton s Paper was lacking in efforts for practical useful- 
ness. Many suggestions, first thrown out in that paper, 
have since been turned into realities. Among others there 
appeared a letter in this paper, by a common friend 
of the editor and myself, Mr. Thomas J. Hyatt, which 
not only sketched a state of things similar to those 
afterward so fully described by Mr. Bellamy in "Look- 
ing Backward," but distinctly affirmed that the time 
would come when places of recreation for the poor in 
hot weather would be built over the New York piers, 
affording room and opportunity for the people of the 
crowded tenements to breathe the cool air of the river 
and bay, a place for the mothers to bring their little 
ones, for the sick and worn-out workmen to come and 
enjoy the life-giving breezes of the bay and the ocean, 
and thus preserve and renew the life which God had 
given them for good purposes. This suggestion, of which 
Mr. Hyatt is the originator, has since been acted upon, 
though I have not heard that in this instance the honor 
has been given to whom the honor is due. 



CHAPTER XL 

ONE OF SWINTON's LAST UTTERANCES. HOW HE SUPPORTED 

THE LABOR UNIONS. 

In order to give the reader a fair specimen of Mr. 
Swinton^s style, and show what a broad, comprehensive 
view he took of the labor question and its leaders, I 
think I cannot do better than quote the concluding 
paragraphs of one of his last utterances in the J^ew 
York Herald, in an article entitled, "The Impending 
Industrial Crisis,'^ published September 1, 1901, and 
illustrated with the picture of a stalwart workingman 
standing with folded arms on the one side and a well- 
clad, portly capitalist examining the stock exchange 
tape-ticker on the other. Singularly enough, this pass- 
age seems to portray the state of things existing at the 
present time (September, 1902) quite as correctly as it 
does those of September, 1901: 

''One very interesting feature of the steel workers' 
revolt appeared soon after its beginning. I refer to the 
'negotiations,' secret and open, between the contending 
parties. They reminded me of the interchanges of two 
European powers in the case of a serious dispute that 
might lead to a rupture. They partook of the nature 
of what Macchiavelli has called 'high politics.' They 
would have suited Talleyrand or Metternich, if not John 
Hay and Li Hung Chang. There was a series of cau- 
tious approaches at first, and then, after the Amalga- 
mated had given warning of its purpose, diplomacy 
began to get in its fine work. Messengers of both parties 
ran to and fro. The telegraph was called into service, 

57 



5S CAKEER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

Tliere were ^conferences' behind locked doors. In time 
we heard of Mr. Morgan's ^protocol/ framed in New 
York, and, after a reasonable delay for consultation, we 
heard of Mr. Shaffer's ^protocol/ issued at Pittsburg. 
When things took on a belligerent aspect Mr. Morgan 
suddenly sent out his ''ultimatum/ and it was but a 
few days afterwards that Mr. Shaffer's ^ultimatum' was 
sent out. Like government Ministers in a time of stress, 
the respective parties had held ^councils' all along, the 
advisers of Mr. Morgan being Messrs. Schwab and Gary, 
with others, and those of Mr. Shaffer being the members 
of his executive board. On several occasions there was a 
'crisis,' and all the time, while each party was strengthen- 
ing its defences, both parties were looking for 'allies,' 
which Morgan found in Wall street and Shaffer in the 
Federation of Ijabor. 

"Then came the conflict, which oj)ened with a series of 
long drawn-out maneuvers, and next came the events which 
have been reported in the Herald. 

"I confess that, in the case of an affair as large as 
that here spoken of, I like to see it preceded by diploma- 
cies, conferences, negotiations, protocols, pourparlers and 
all that sort of thing. They indicate preparation; they 
are an acknowledgment by each party of the power 
of the other; they look like an appeal to reason; they 
contain a hope; they are the outgrowth of organization 
on both sides; they call out the services of men capable 
of dealing with large questions; and they enable out- 
siders to judge of the merits of the case. We shall 
assuredly see more of such proceedings hereafter, what- 
ever may be the result of any struggle between the 
two confronting powers known as 'capital' and labor.' 

"And here it may be well to say something about the 



ONE OF SWINTON's LAST UTTERANCES 59 

so-called 'labor leaders' of our time, for the information 
of the Philistines. Let no one doubt that there are 
strong men on the labor side nowadays. As the work- 
ingmen^s organizations of our country have increased 
in number, membership, potency and efficiency; as the 
questions with which it is their business to deal have 
grown in importance, size and complexity; as unionism 
has spread until it is coextensive with our Republic; 
as the struggle between the contending forces has be- 
come more severe and resolute ; as the danger signals have 
become more numerous and monitory; as the industrial 
and social transformation has more and more affected 
the community, to the detriment of our old-time Ameri- 
canism, it is evident that men of ability on the labor 
side are more necessary than they were in the day of 
small things. The more competent men within the ranks 
are needed for service on that side. 

"A union leader in our time ought to be a statesman, 
in the large sense, a man of action, ideas, knowledge 
and character, one who has an understanding of the 
philosophy of the labor question as it stands in our time 
and country. ISTow, I am free to say, after mingling for 
a lifetime with men of all sorts and conditions, from 
Wall street and Herald square to the Santee river and 
Pike's Peak, that the workingmen's unions contain 
plenty of members whose mental caliber is equal to that 
of the more prominent men in business, finance or 
affairs. This remark may be offensive to the Philisiines, 
but it is made here for the instruction of those of them 
who think that all the horny-handed millions are block- 
heads. 

"It is a fact of immeasurable importance to the 
'magnates' that Caliban is thinking, that his brains 



60 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

have been growing for some years, and that he is learn- 
ing how things go in this world. It is a fact of solemn 
and suggestive importance, for there is not money 
enough on earth to subdue millions of reasoning, intelli- 
gent, sagacious, healthy and stalwart men. It has been 
through the ignorance of the masses that arbitrary men 
and plutocrats have gained their power. I shall men- 
tion no name of any of the strong men in the ranks who 
have been referred to; suffice it to say that they desire no 
notoriety. 

^''Of late years, moreover, the 'labor cause' has been 
strengthened by a good number of thinkers who are 
outside its lines, such writers as Henry D. Lloyd, the 
author of 'Wealth and Commonwealth;' Ernest Crosby, 
of Tlain Talk in Psalm and Parable;' Edwin Markham, 
'The Man with the Hoe,' and many others not less 
meritorious. This fact, also, is one not to be over- 
looked. 

"This is not the place to speak of the simultaneous 
awakening of the proletariat in the countries of Europe, 
in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Great 
Britain. It never had a parallel in the past. The scien- 
tific oracles used to speak of 'spontaneous generation,^ 
and now we can see something like it. 

"It is utterly in vain for trusts, combinations of 
employers or capitalists to try to prevent the organiza- 
tion of labor into unions, or to set aside the rights of 
the unions or to destroy their rightful influence. They 
have fought the fight for existence and won it. They 
have gained their strength despite innumerable adver- 
saries and obstructions, through untold suffering, heroic 
valor and unyielding persistency. They have brought 
benefits to their members and to all labor that it would 



ONE OF SWINTON's LAST UTTERANCES 61 

require volumes to describe. 'Crush them!' cried a 
money king, as he fell from his throne. The money 
kings will fall first. The unions form the largest and 
the best benefit societies in our country. They are schools 
of order, discipline, reason and brotherhood. The enemy 
may get the upper hand at times ; but what of that while 
the beaten party lives to fight another day? If union- 
ism were destroyed, if the millions of organized work- 
men who are engaged in all the organized industries of 
the country were forced to disband and take part in the 
general scramble at a time of industrial anarchy, be 
sure that other things than labor would suffer when chaos 
came again. It would be a bad time for the 'magnates' 
and for the whole community, and for many a branch 
of business, and for the public liberties, and for the 
Republican and Democratic parties — aye, and for Wall 
street itself. We might even gain some knowledge of that 
'impending crisis' which is surely a thing to steer clear of, 
if it be possible. 

"Before closing my remarks I would make note of one 
thing that undoubtedly has an influence in disturbing 
the mind of the commonalty in these times. I refer to 
the oft-repeated public reports of the stupendous incomes 
of certain great trusts, flamboyant millionaires, banking 
institutions, big corporations, stock speculators, market 
riggers and indescribables. To go no further back than 
the current month, we have had in August such figures 
of the dividends of the Standard Oil Company and the 
revenues of the billion-dollar Steel Trust, and the 'earn- 
ings^ of at least one of our banks, and the incomes of 
some of our heavy investors or operators; such figures, 
I repeat, as might well 'make humanity stagger' and cause 
Croesus to take to the woods. 



62 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

"To the ordinary mind these reports, even when trust- 
worthy or official, are inexplicable, incomprehensible and 
bewildering. Never before, in all time, did golden 
streams, the millions and the billions, roll so rapidly as 
now, rolling into treasuries so vast that they could not 
be compassed in a day's march by all the labor unions 
in America. The ordinary mind is apt to become excited 
in reading about them every day, and to ask why it is 
necessary to cut down anybody's wages, even if he gets 
two or three dollars a day, and joins a union to keep 
them up. 

"The news of the latest dividend of the billion dollar 
Trust was printed simultaneously with other news of 
strikes, more strikes, and yet other strikes. Can any one 
be surprised that even thoughtless people are led to indulge 
in thinking? 

"I am asked to make a guess as to the outcome of 
all these big, passionate and ominous labor revolts, which 
are constantly growing in magnitude, momentum and 
force. I can't do it. I cannot see how they are to be 
prevented or put down without a change of circum- 
stances so great as to be unthinkable, or without a change 
in bodies of men who are beyond reason, or without some 
kind of change in the relation between capital and labor. 
It is possible that there may be something in the theory 
of 'spontaneous generation,' and that it will work out 
all right in the end, regardless of the lesser movements 
of either of the belligerents. I can't tell, nor can Mr. 
Morgan. It would certainly be bad business to use the 
regular army or the State militia against masses of men 
striking for life. It would certainly be poor policy to 
carry 'government by injunction' further than it can 
be enforced. It is surely folly to abuse and threaten 



63 

organized labor in the interest of organized capital at 
periods of storm and stress consequent upon an indus- 
trial and social transformation, when our country is pass- 
ing out of the old into the new and the unknown. 

"I am disposed to guess that the disturbing question 
of our time will yet have to be taken into politics, sub- 
mitted to the general judgment of the whole American 
people, and thus determined, at least for a time, as other 
grave questions have been in past times." 

Let us hope that the next generation, at least, will see 
this prophecy fulfilled. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

REFORMERS, PATRIOTS AND PHILANTHROPISTS. 

Let me glance for a moment at the motives or the 
mainspring of action of men of Swinton's stamp. It is 
generally conceded that the great majority of men are 
moved by self-interest, or, in other words, by the desire 
of procuring the best possible condition for themselves 
and their families. Nor is this motive unjustifiable or in 
any way to be condemned; for each, in striving to im- 
prove his own condition, may improve that of others. 
Buckle demonstrates that he who, in the furtherance of 
his own interest, gives large employment to others, does 
more good than he who founds a hospital or endows a 
school of learning. It is only when this motive is pur- 
sued without regard to its effect on others, or to the 
detriment of others, that it becomes not only unjustifiable, 
but damnable; then it becomes reckless selfishness and is 
utterly to be condemned. Adam Smith, in his essay on 
"Self-interest," proves that, under proper restrictions, 
self-interest works for the general good. 

What, then, shall we say of the man who strives for 
the interest of others while injuring his own? What 
shall we say of the motives of him who, while endeavoring 
to increase the wealth and comfort of others, consciously 
decreases his own? Is there nothing in his heart but 
pure love of mankind? Is there any man living, or any 
man who ever lived, except the Divine Man, who acted 
without a grain of regard to self? I think not. The 
saints were animated by the hope, na}^, the assurance, of 

64 



REFORMERS, PATRIOTS AND PHILANTHROPISTS 65 

winning the favor of Heaven ; but I am not now speaking 
of saints. 

Hard as it may seem to say so, I do not hesitate to 
affirm that the purest philanthropist, the most self-sac- 
rificing patriot, has, apart from the pleasure of doing 
good, his own peculiar gratification in his work; that 
one of his motives, perhaps his chief motive, is the grati- 
fication of presenting a good example ; or the gratification 
of feeling that he is standing on a higher plane than 
other men; or the gratification of being appreciated by 
future generations. I do not doubt that even Socrates 
and Washington, Howard and Garrison, were animated 
by some such feelings; and Swinton is not an exception 
in this respect. Was he not, while carrying on his paper 
so long at a loss, enjoying the luxury of the martyr for 
truth, who feels that he is right and all the world wrong? 
Was he not waiting and watching for the tide to turn 
and risking his last penny in the confident hope that it 
would turn? Did he not feel that he was furthering a 
great and necessary reformation which would carry his 
name down to posterity as surely as the Protestant 
Eef ormation carried down that of Martin Luther ? Wash- 
ington and John Brown knew they w.ere right though 
all the world was against them; and this was the feeling 
that sustained John Swinton. 

When, in his youthful years, he was working as a com- 
positor, I never thought Swinton had any peculiar or 
particular affection for the men by whom he was sur- 
rounded. Nor had they for him. Many of them received 
material aid from him which they never returned and 
which he never asked for; but I never knew one of 
them who did him any special service. They, no doubt, 
thought he had, more money than he knew what to do 



66 CAREER AND CONVEKSATIOX OF JOHN SWINTON 

with, and saved him the trouble of keeping it. However, 
he never lost his esteem for the craft. When, in 1884, 
a printer submitted to him some matter for his paper, 
he sent for the author. "That matter," said he, "I shall 
use as an editorial. This is the highest compliment I 
can make 3'ou : for I never yet have put into my editorial 
columns a line written by any one but myself." On 
another occasion, when the same printer handed him a 
manuscript "for the good of the cause," Swinton ex- 
claimed: "Well, that's a satisfaction for you, to write 
for the good of the cause ; and here's ten dollars, which is 
a satisfaction for me, to reward so good a worker in the 
cause." Swinton never forgot this printer, but constantly 
sent him clippings to aid him in his work, and words of 
praise for his writings. His name is J. Vi. Sullivan, now 
famous as a writer on co-operation, the referendum, and 
other humanitarian questions. 

Many of our greatest patriots and philanthropists were 
largely endowed with self-esteem, sometimes amounting 
to undisguised egotism. Conscious of capacity or cour- 
age beyond the reach of ordinary men, they had no 
hesitation in asserting their superiority to others. Victor 
Hugo, for instance, was one of these. He was not only 
a man of rare genius, of great qualities of heart, but 
a patriot, philanthropist and self-sacrificing hero; and 
yet Hugo was characterized by measureless self-assertion. 
He thought he could, by grandiose phrases, prevent the 
victorious armies of Germany from entering "the sacred 
capital of France, the city of ideas, the seat of liberty, 
of civilization," and so on. In the same way John 
Swinton imagined he could, single-handed, and by the 
influence of a little weekly paper, overturn in a few 
short years a social fabric which has taken thousands 



REFOEMERS, PATRIOTS AND PHILANTHROPISTS 67 

of years to build, whose foundations were laid before the 
Pyramids, and whose ramifications extend over the 
uttermost parts of the earth. The truth is that most 
reformers, like most poets, have something of madness 
about them. They will attempt, as easy and practicable, 
things which other people regard as sheer insanity. To 
such men nothing is impossible; nothing beyond their 
capacity; and this is one of the secrets of their power. 
"Impossible !" said Mirabeau to his secretary ; "never again 
mention to me that blockhead's word !"' 

Sometimes, to hear Swinton talk, or to read what he 
wrote, you would think he was making the powers totter 
and that he would, at no great distance of time, change 
the face of the earth. On account of his talent and 
ability I always overlooked this as an idiosyncrasy pecu- 
liar to reformers; yet, at times, he would speak in 
such an extravagant way it seemed strange to me that so 
shrewd a man, with such rare knowledge of life and 
events, could form such notions of his power. Most of 
us are the victims of delusions of some sort, but reform- 
ers seem to be more so than others. Being naturally 
sanguine, they firmly believe that mountains can be re- 
moved, not only by faith, but simply by showing that they 
ouglit to be removed. 

Swinton had, however, seen great things done in his 
time, had helped to do great things, and it is no wonder 
he considered himself capable of greater things still, 
Mirabeau, the most gigantic figure of the French Eevo- 
lution, knew and openly declared that he was the great- 
est Frenchman of his time. "Raise this head,'' said he, 
on his deathbed, "the greatest in France!" So that 
this pride of uncommon intellectual power, this faith in 
the efficacy of self-sacrifice, is one of the sources of the 



68 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

strength of all great reformers. If they were incapable 
of such feelings the}^ would be incapable of heroic 
action; for the consciousness that, sooner or later, all 
things perish, and oblivion overtakes us all, never inspired 
an}^ man to heroic deeds. 

The lesson to be derived by every young reformer 
from John Swinton's life is this : Keep your principles ; 
advocate them; spread them by every means in your 
power; but don't throw away your hard-won earnings 
in a vain endeavor to convert the world to them, for the 
world is not so easily converted as you may imagine; 
don't be Quixotic in your battles, but rather Napoleonic, 
looking well to the consequences of defeat, but never 
minding what you will do in case of victory; that will 
be an easy matter; it will settle itself quite satisfac- 
torily. It will probably take a century or two to realize 
the Socialists' ideals. All great revolutions, like the 
Protestant Eeformation, the English Eevolution of 1680, 
the French Eevolution of 1789, had their origins away 
back centuries before they occurred. And so it will prob- 
ably be with the slow-moving Socialist Eevolution, which 
is coming, coming, and surely will be here some day, 
though we may not see it. It is an evolutionary process, 
slow but sure. 

In the last number of his paper Mr. Swinton wrote these 
words: "Papers may rise or fall; parties may organize, 
shift around or collapse; men may come or go; the skies 
may falter or fall; but, for all that and everything else, 
the social and industrial revolution, now in progress, will 
advance without pause." Of this he never doubted, and 
Time will doubtless prove the correctness of his faith. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SWINTON'S latter years. — LAST INTERVIEWS WITH HIM. 

After his return from Europe Swinton became again 
a regular contributor to the columns of the l!^ew York 
Sun, and as long as his old friend, Charles A. Dana, 
lived he wrote five or six columns for that paper every 
week. When that distinguished editor died there came 
into his place one "who knew not Joseph," and Swinton's 
connection with the Sun was severed. That separation 
was, I know, preceded by a volcanic eruption between 
him and the new editor which the latter will not readily 
forget. It was another case of the new king dismissing 
abruptly his father's experienced minister; but, unlike 
that of the German emperor and his famous minister, no 
reconciliation was ever effected. 

Then Swinton, after a period of miscellaneous work 
for various journals, formed a connection with the New 
York World, for which he wrote an article almost daily, 
under his own signature, on the various phases of the 
labor question. During the last few years he wrote 
chiefly for magazines, foreign newspapers and syndi- 
cates. In fact, he was for a long time "blacklisted" 
among the big dailies on account of his Socialistic 
views, with which, of course, the millionaire proprietors 
of these papers have not a particle of sympathy. Sym- 
pathy, did I say? In fact, the word "Socialist" with 
them acts like a red rag on a wild bull. It is certain that 
if Christ Himself came to New York to-day and became 
a newspaper writer. He would be among the first to be 

69 



70 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

blacklisted, and by the very same people who black- 
listed Him in His own day. But "there are others/^ 

The last time I saw Mr. Swinton I noticed on the 
upper ledge of his writing desk a "big ha' Bible/' and 
I said to him: 

"I see you keep the Bible before you now, John." 

"Yes," said he, "that is my chart and compass now. 
Whenever I get discouraged I take it down and read 
St. Luke's Gospel or the Sermon on the Mount, and then 
I feel refreshed and renewed and also fortified in my 
course of life. Whatever man may do, I know God will 
not desert me." 

In one of his letters to me he speaks of reading the 6th 
chapter of Luke "while imbued with love for Him who 
speaks in it," and exclaims, "What a glorious chapter 
it is!" 

When we recall the life of Christ as presented in St. 
Luke's Gospel — His entire unselfishness. His devotion to 
the poor and unfortunate. His poverty and self-sacrifice. 
His utter disregard of the things of this world. His love 
of the good, the noble, the true — is it any wonder that 
Swinton went to Him for support? Though not a 
churchman, nor very fond of priests, he was a deeply 
religious man. He tried to do what the Master did — 
he tried to help the poor and the suffering; and, like 
Him, he was rewarded with obloquy and ingratitude. 
The large, enlightened, grand conception which Swinton 
had of our Saviour may be seen in one of his last arti- 
cles, "On the Way to Nazareth," published in the New 
York Herald shortly before his death. "My feelings to- 
ward Judas and my conception of Christ," said a good 
Christian, "were largely changed after reading that article." 
It is so short I venture to insert it here : 



71 
OK THE WAY TO NAZAKETH— A LEGEND. 

BY JOHN SWINTON. 

It was many years after the crucifixion when an aged 
Judean, while walking along the highway near Naza- 
reth, saw coming toward him a youthful Galilean. The 
aged man held in his hands a scroll, which he read as he 
walked. 

As the twain drew nigh to each other, the Galilean sa- 
luted the Judean and accosted him. "What readest 
thou ?" he asked, in gentle tone. 

"The Law," replied the other. 

"Hast thou seen the Gospel?" inquired the Galilean. 

"Aye!" he answered, in trembling voice, ^"but that is 
not for me. I am Iscariot !" 

"And art thou," spake the Galilean, "the Judas of that 
name who betrayed the Christ?'' 

"'Twas I!" he cried, in agony and with distorted 
visage, as he gazed at the Galilean. "But who art 
thou?" 

"Thy friend," replied the other. 

"I have no friend on earth or in heaven," said Judas. 
"When I read the law I am affrighted, and when I pray 
to the one God, I see Him frown. I am Iscariot !" 

"Thy friend I am, dear Judas. Look on me." 

The Galilean's voice was gracious as he spoke, but 
Judas shook as smitten to the soul. He flung himself at 
the feet of the Galilean, who had called him friend, and 
kissed them. 

"The Gospel is for thee, dear Judas," said the friend, 
as Judas lay upon the ground in tears. 

"Nay, nay," said Judas. "I bartered off my soul 
and I sold my Master, Him who was divine. 'Twas said 



72 CAREER AXD CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

I hanged myself, and it is true, but I did not die, thougTi 
hanged/^ 

^^And yet, dear Judas, know His Gospel is for thee,'' 
said the other, with firm voice, to the aged Judean, sunk 
in despair. 

"By what authority speakest thou?" asked Iscariot, 
as he looked into the Galilean's face. "Speakest thou for 
Peter, John or other brethren, lost, though yet alive? 
the men whom once I loved only less deeply than I loved 
the Christ ? Who art thou ?" cried the aged Judean, "and 
whence thy authority?" 

"The authority, dear Judas, of Him who was cruci- 
fied, and who spoke the words: 'No one who cometh to 
me shall be cast out.' " 

"Those words are not for me," wailed Iscariot. 

"Aye, for thee, each word, dear Judas, and for thee 
alike the last cry of the Christ, that all might be for- 
given. I speak for Him." 

"But who art thou?" exclaimed Iscariot once again, as 
he saw that love illumined the face of the Galilean who 
stood before him. 

"It was I who spoke the words while on the cross, and 
here I speak them once again to thee." 

"The Christ?" asked Judas. "He whom once I loved, 
whom I betrayed, for whose loss I have wept these weary 
years, and for whose betrayal I'll lave my heart in tears 
till death?" 

"Thy sins, dear Judas," softly spoke the Galilean, "are 
forgiven. To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise !" 

Judas Iscariot lay dead at nightfall. His only friend 
embraced his redeemed spirit as they rose aloft, amid 
sounds of angelic music. 

And was it, then, his long lost Master whom he had 



swinton's latter years 



73 



met on the Galilean highway as he walked toward Naza- 
reth, where the Christ was born ? 

Was there ever a larger, nobler conception of Christ 
than this ? Even Ingersoll, had he lived, would have been 
moved by it. 

I may say here that Swedenborg's doctrines seem to 
have appealed strongly to Swinton ; and I noticed that he 
was married by Eev. Chauncey Giles, a Swedenborgian 
clergyman, and buried by a clergyman of the same faith. 

Swinton had, no doubt, his moments of depression — 
what man has not?— but his nature was elastic, and he 
quickly recovered from such spells. He never expressed 
any regrets for the course he had taken. Over his desk, 
just under the Bible, he had nailed up these lines from 
Milton, which he frequently repeated : 

"Yet I argue not 
Against Heaven's hand or will; nor bate one jot 
Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer 
Right onward." 

These lines summed up his feelings; they strengthened 
his heart and encouraged his hope. For if Milton, in 
his defeat and blindness, his poverty and neglect, could 
so hope and write, why should not he, who championed 
the cause of the poor, the overworked, and the ill-paid, 
keep up heart and hope ? 

When I asked him if I should publish a sketch of his 
life, he said: "No; it won't pay; the workingman does 
not read books or pamphlets; and as for the capitalist 
class, they don't want to know anything of me. You 
have no idea of the length, breadth, height and depth of 
the hatred of capitalists at the name of Socialist. And 
as for the Labor people, they will say all manner of 



74 CAEEER AND CONVEESATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

good things oi you, that they love you, and will do any- 
thing for you, and all that; but when it comes to paying 
anything for what you say or write, that is another matter. 
When I went to Chicago, where they assured me forty 
thousand men were waiting breathless to hear me speak, 
I found about twenty men as an audience, and pretty soon 
these twenty, before I had spoken ten minutes, went off to 
see a dog-fight !" 

'•'Don't they pay you when you go so far on such 
errands ?" 

"^o; I never ask for pay; if I did, the Satanic press 
would denounce me as a paid hireling of the workingmen's 
unions, and so forth.*' • 

''Don't you sometimes find appreciative people among 
these audiences?" 

"Oh, yes; I occasionally find one or two come up to 
me, when the lecture is over, and say, with bated breath, 
they have had such thoughts for years, but never dared to 
express them." 

Speaking of people who, notwithstanding uncommon 
talents, had failed in life, I said that in my experience 
most of those who had failed had some serious defect 
in their make-up — they were either indolent, irresolute, 
incapable, or vicious in some way. This he stoutly 
denied. 

"I could name twenty able, industrious, and honor- 
able men," said he, "who once occupied high positions 
in the world, and you may now find them sitting idle on 
the Park benches; and there is So-and-So and So-and-So 
and So-and-So, all contemptible sneaks, who are now 
occupying the positions of these able, industrious, and 
honorable men." 

Swinton said that, in the newspaper offices, older men 



swinton's latter years 75 

are thrust aside, and the cry is for young men. It is 
not quality of work that is now wanted, but quantity. 

Swinton wrote a weekly letter for the Scotsman^ a 
widely circulated paper of Scotland, the editor of which 
paper, he declared, had treated him more nobly and gen- 
erously than any other editor he ever knew. The fact 
that Swinton was the American correspondent of this 
paper was not generally known. 

We talked about a Scotsman who had gained a com- 
manding position in the world. He had acquired wealth, 
fame, and high position; but he had not a friend — do 
you call that life a success ? Swinton pitied him. 

"His wealth and honors are all blighted by that one 
action," he said. 

Though he would, with one who decried the Scots, de- 
fend them to the last ditch, he spoke somewhat depre- 
ciatingly of his own experience in Scotland. "Scot- 
land," said he, "never did anything for me, and I never 
claimed kinship with the Scots, but preferred to pass as 
an American." 

"Why so?" 

"Why, when I came into the world, Scotland had not 
a foot of ground for me to stand on, hardly a bit of 
bread for me to eat, and the kirk sent me to hell, almost 
before I was born. I could get no education there, ex- 
cept that voluntarily given me by my uncle, the Eev. 
Dr. Currie, God bless him; and the rest was the cate- 
chism, drummed and pounded into me by a man with 
a big black beard, whom I hated like the devil. Why 
should I be proud of Scotland ? All I am, and all I have 
been, or hope to be, I owe to the United States. Never- 
theless, I love and admire many Scottish heroes, many 
Scottish poets and prose-writers, and many Scottish 
men, living and dead." 



76 CAKEEE AND CONVEBSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

*T3o you know that here in the United States, in all 
its history, the Scots have cut a larger figure, in propor- 
tion to their number, than the people of any other Euro- 
pean country?^' 

"Yes, I do ; and I admire them for it/' 

We spoke of writing for the newspaper press. He 
said there was such a mob of newspaper writers nowa- 
days that few could make anything out of it — ^there were, 
however, a few who could write well. What a man should 
do was to fix on some subject as his specialty, make a study 
of that, and write on it. The morgue of the newspaper 
and the periodical press — ^the repository of rejected manu- 
scripts — was full to repletion, and a bon-fire would soon 
have to be made of them. 

We spoke of Mr. X. He said that while he (John) 
was living in a garret on five dollars a week, after the 
failure of his paper, Mr. X. was spending $30,000 a year 
to live, and never once inquired after him. John had 
helped him through college, and this was how Mr. X had 
rewarded him. 

Speaking of Gladstone, he said: "This man, carrying 
the weight of the British empire on him at 83, making 
his most brilliant speech at that age, and fighting for a 
great Reform Bill against the most tremendous opposi- 
tion, had actually, by his example, increased the life of 
man at least ten years." 

Although Swinton was to the last as vigorous and 
vehement as ever in his denunciation of tyrants, scoun- 
drels and humbugs, time had in some respects greatly 
mellowed his character; for he spoke now with large 
charity of men who were once his deadly enemies, saw 
good traits in men whom he once denounced as "in- 
carnate devils," and exhibited an ever-increasinof com- 



SWINTOX'S LATTER YEARS 77 

passion toward all those who were suffering, no matter 
in what cause, or of what race. Of the poor laboring 
men and tenement-dwellers in the big cities, he said: 
"These poor fellows pay, in one shape or another, more 
than half their earnings in taxes, while the millionaires, 
who make thousands of dollars while they are asleep, 
go almost scot-free — the millionaires control everything, 
judge, jury, legislature and Supreme Court, and shape 
things all for their own advantage. But there will be a 
big reckoning some day! What an outrageous thing, 
what an infamous thing, that decision of the Supreme 
Court was, declaring the income tax unconstitutional! 
That was the millionaires' doing — they will all go to hell 
for it.'* 

Mr. Swinton was one of the founders of the New 
York Twilight Club — a charming group of good fellows 
of various professions who meet once a fortnight at six 
o'clock for a dinner and a talk on some interesting topic 
of the day — and he was a member of various other 
organizations connected with the press, with social 
science, with literature, and with the labor question. 
When he appeared at the Twilight — which lately gave a 
dinner in his honor— he usually made the occasion, by 
a forcible and piquant address, a memorable one. Lately 
the New York Social Reform Club gave a dinner in his 
honor, at which some of the best-known writers and 
speakers in the country were present. Here he made an 
off-hand address of a remarkably interesting character, 
reminding me of the old days when Eedpath and Cod- 
man, Dawson and Henry George, used to delight us at 
the Twilight Club; for he spoke freely of all his ex- 
periences on the press, of the many famous editors he 
had personally known, of the way in which they "got 

LofC. 



78 CAREER AND CONVERSATION OF JOHN SWINTON 

up'' their "stuff/' and of the defeats as well as the 
victories of various knights of the quill — in fact, every 
sentence of this address was replete with interest, full 
of humor, sarcasm, and wit. Among the letters of dis- 
tinguished friends, which were read by the chairman on 
this occasion, there was one, that of Henry Watterson, 
which was singularly felicitous, sparkling with playful 
wit and clever satire, which kept "the table on the 
roar" for a long time. There were many good speakers 
and much good talk on this occasion ; but I thought Swin- 
ton and Watterson surpassed all the others. 

When Mr. Swinton spoke of his personal experiences, 
of the men and the measures he had had to do with, he 
was uncommonly felicitous and interesting; and I regret 
that he had not the necessary leisure to write a book 
which he once intended to write, "Fifty Years a Jour- 
nalist." There would have been some very interesting 
revelations in that book. 

Mr. Swinton died, after an illness of ten days, on 
December 16, 1901, in his seventy-second year. He left 
a wife, but no children. His wife, whom he used to 
call his angel, had been everything to him, hands, eyes, 
feet — she ministered to him in all his work and ways, 
went with him everywhere, and supported him in all his 
trials and troubles. Had it not been for her, he would 
have died many years earlier. Mrs. Swinton is the 
daughter of the famous phrenologist Fowler, of the well- 
known firm. of Fowler & Wells. 

Let me say, in conclusion, that the one thing, above all 
others, for which John Swinton should be remembered 
is the fact that he ever wielded an honest pen, ever 
spoke the truth, without fear or favor, as he saw it. 
He never wrote what he did not believe in, never ad- 



eWINTON'S LATTEE YEARS 79 

vocated any cause which was not just and honorable, 
never penned a line for pecuniary reward alone. He 
was one of these knights of the quill sans peur et sans 
reproche, of whom there are not too many on the New 
York press, and commanded the respect of every honest 
man among them. Always preferring honorable poverty 
to inglorious luxury, neither wealth nor power could 
corrupt him, neither flattery nor favor lead him astray. 
It was Henry J. Esmond who said of him (and he cer- 
tainly knew him) that "he was the only newspaper 
writer he ever knew who had not an axe of his own to 
grind." No man could look into that fearless eye and 
lion-like face without feeling that he had before him a 
man of sound principles, of generous nature, of uncom- 
mon talents, and of independent mind. 

**When real history shall be written by the truthful and 
the wise," said his friend. Colonel Ingersoll, "the kneelers 
at the shrines of Chance and Fraud, the brazen idols once 
worshipped as gods, shall be the very food of scorn; while 
those who have borne the burden of defeat, who have 
earned and kept their self-respect, who have never bowed 
to men or money, for place or power, shall wear upon their 
browB the laurel minted with the oak." 



CHARLES F. WINGATE^S TRIBUTE. 

Remembrance of John Swinton. 



(Spritigfield Republican^ January 19, 1902.) 

The late John Swinton was not forgotten by his friends 
in New York City, where he had lived his intense and 
emphatic life in behalf of a better social system. The 
best account of the man and his service is that given by 
Charles F. Wingate, secretary of the Twilight Club, in the 
leaflet of the Club's 302d dinner. Wingate is one of the 
warm and earnest men who have friends in every camp, 
and has maintained a most interesting free parliament in 
the unique Twilight Club for so many years. Readers of 
The Bepuhlican or 35 or 30, years ago must remember the 
brilliant letters of "Carlfried," and such as these were, 
the present utterances of Wingate are. For himself, he is 
one who embraces sincerity, in many guises, and never 
metes with his wand the limits of other men's thoughts^ 
Thus it is that the Twilight discussions at the St. Denis, 
or at Morello's, or wherever the meeting place has been, 
have proved ver}' stimulating to freedom of expression. 
This, however, is merely introductory to what he has 
written about Swinton, an old friend and TVilighter, and 
he prefixes to his reminiscences Heine's adjuration: 
"When I am dead, lay a sword on my coffin; for I was a 
brave soldier in the war for humanity." The tribute here 
begins : 

80 



REMEMBRANCE OF JOHN SWINTON ^1 

Jolm Swinton was one of the oldest members of the 
Twilight Club. He was present at the sixth meeting 
in 1883, and for some years, until his health failed, he 
was a frequent attendant. He was always listened to 
with interest, and he was elected one of the executive 
committee in 1886. He required a big subject or some 
sort of opposition to stir his blood. One speech, which 
he made after his return from Europe, was the most 
remarkable of any delivered before the Club. The subject 
was Socialism. Col. Dawson presided, and Swinton elec- 
trified his audience by describing the vast meetings he had 
attended at Hyde Park, and his observations in Edinburgh, 
Paris and other cities. Everywhere he saw the many- 
headed and many-minded mob suffering untold misery in 
silence. It seemed wonderful that they did not revolt and 
overthrow their oppressors. But he added, ^'"Caliban is 
sitting at the feet of Cadmus and learning his letters." 
When Swinton sat down, a member tugged his neighbor's 
sleeve and said: "Let's go out and go home before any- 
one else spoils that wonderful speech." 

The newspapers have not done justice to John Swin- 
ton's unique personality. He was an experienced journal- 
ist, the right hand of Henry J. Raymond, in the Times, 
and the no less capable lieutenant of Mr. Dana, whose 
place on the Sun he filled for a year at a time without the 
public suspecting the absence of the editor-in-chief. He 
was ever the advocate of the truth as he saw it, ready 
to speak on any platform and to any audience ; before the 
Nineteenth Century Club, at the Waldorf-Astoria, or to a 
mass meeting of strikers on the East Side. He was a 
living exponent of Mill's "Essay on Liberty," and neither 
adverse criticism nor threats of arrest could overawe him. 
Lastly, Swinton was a poet who saw visions and spoke in 



83 CAEEER AND CONVERSATION OP JOHN SWINTOK 

parables, and lie wrote with an eloquence and vigor that 
were peculiarly his own. 

Swinton was a bit of a genius. He had all of Car- 
lyle^s whirlwind eloquence, and he liked to denounce men 
and things. But he had the saving grace of humor, and 
could laugh at his own extravagance. "Last week,'' he 
once said, "I spoke to 3,000 Bohemians at the Cooper 
Union, and they were carried away with enthusiasm; 
yet, not one in ten understood a word I said, and he got 
it wrong!" 

A man is to be judged by his friendships, and this 
violent iconoclast numbered Henry J. Raymond, Charles 
A. Dana, Whitelaw Reid, Henry George, James Eedpath, 
Henry Watterson and Murat Halstead among his friends. 

Louis F. Post compares Swinton with Victor Hugo, 
and had he lived in Paris he might have rivaled Roche- 
fort as a leader of the radicals, and perhaps become one 
of the immortals. Americans could not understand 
"John Swinton's Paper," but to a Frenchman it was just 
right. On that account, and because he had no distinct 
plan of reform, the paper failed, and Swinton lost a small 
fortune. He thought the workmen ungrateful, but the 
time was not ripe till Henry George came with his posi- 
tive program. Swinton was a John the Baptist cry- 
ing in the wilderness, and everyone appreciated his self- 
sacrifice. 

Swinton, like Carlyle and Dr. Johnson, was best 
in a monologue, and I have listened with delight as 
he wandered from one topic to another, telling of men 
he had known, or of his wide and varied experience. 
He was sometimes caustic in his comments, but at 
heart no one could be kinder or more generous. He 
was not pessimistic, despite his deep disgust with social 



REMEMBRANCE OF JOHN SWINTOlf 83 

hypocrisy and greed, but like a true democrat he had an 
abiding faith in humanity. 

Like everyone else, he liked to be remembered, and 
while seeking health abroad he seemed to keenly appre- 
ciate the little notes sent by his friends. In a letter 
from Rome he wrote: "I have read the circulars con- 
taining the reports of the three banquets, and I must 
say that the themes debated and the debates upon them 
are elevated to a degree that is astounding. Long 
'live the Twilight Club!' If I ever get back to New 
York in health, I shall certainly enjoy its meetings.'' 
The writing is that of an invalid, but the heart is 
warm and true. While the world to-day echoes with 
praises of Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan for their 
munificent gifts to found libraries, hospitals and colleges, 
let us not forget the men who gave their lives to the 
cause of the people. 

Swinton was negative in nothing, but a stanch believer. 
He wrote to a friend : "You ask me to give you the title 
of any book that has been a comfort in sorrow. I answer, 
the Bible." On another occasion he wrote to a friend in 
affliction: "I send you my truest and most tender con- 
dolence over the death of your young and loved daughter. 
Doubt not that you will see her again/' His friends will 
rejoice to think that while his end was racked with pain, 
he faced the great ordeal with faith and fortitude. 

When people talk of this or that successful editor, I 
feel that Horace Greeley, Henry George and John Swinton 
will be remembered long after the money-grabbing news- 
gatherers are forgotten. These great editors were all 
prophets, not waiters. 



ta CABEEB AND CONVEBSATION OF JOHN SWINION 

OTIS H. WILMARTH'S TRIBUTE. 

Brooklyn Citizen, March 30, 1902. 

JOHN SWINTON. 

Dead! the great heart is now at rest, 
Throbless within the silent breast, 
Where raged the flames intense and strong 
Of love for all who sufEer wrong. 

. No mote, shall yield the teeming brain 
Its fruits of winnowed golden grain; 
Food for the unassertive meek, 
And balm for natures shorn and weak. 

No more his clarion voice shall plead. 
No more his spirit intercede 
For those who share the menials' doom: 
In spheres of light to dwell in gloom. 

His magic pen shall trace no more 
The sorrows of the blameless poor, 
■ Nor flood with sympathetic cheer 

1 Their sunless human atmosphere. 

<i 

No more his Spartan soul shall dare 
Oppression's hydra in its lair, 
Of meet the vampire of his race. 
Injustice, rampant, face to face. 

Friend of the legions born to wear 

The yoke of servitude and care; 

Hope for the lame and impotent; ' 

Voice for the speechless innocent; 

Peace to thy ashes, and renown ; 
Thine be the benefactor's crown; 
The music of thy deeds shall sound 
Wherever bunaan hearts are found. 

THE END. 



OCT 25 1902 



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